by Amy Herrick
No, no, no, she argued with herself. She wasn’t going over there. If she got up close to it there was going to be a plaque in front saying that So-and-So’s Grandmother, who invented the first underpants or something, was born and died there in 17 B.C., and that the house was open to the public on Tuesdays between 2:00 and 2:25 P.M. She really didn’t need to see this. Inside there was probably some really old beat-up wooden furniture and a spinning wheel.
A light came on in one of the windows.
The wind gleefully pushed her forward.
As she was pushed closer, another gust blew across the sky and a streetlamp standing beside the house came blinking on. Feenix stared in astonishment.
In the sudden flood of light, the house seemed to burst into color. It sparkled and glittered as if it were covered in pieces of glass and mirror.
She guessed she would have to take a look, after all. Just a quickie.
She set out across the rutted, rolling ground of the Nethermead and the closer she got to the house, the curiouser she became. Curiouser and curiouser. It couldn’t really be what she was thinking it was.
But as Feenix tripped up the little path that led to the front door, she saw she was right. The house wasn’t covered in glass and mirror. It was covered in candy.
Somebody had to be kidding. The walls were a fantastic arrangement of lollipops and sourballs, rock candy and jawbreakers, caramels and Gummi bears, red licorice and lemon drops. The steepled roof was glazed with a covering of shiny pink icing. Stuck into this icing were colored sugar violets and roses. The chimney, she saw, was constructed of blocks of fudge.
She’d never seen anything like it. Was it some sort of Christmas display gone off the deep end? Could this stuff all be real? She looked around. She looked at the house. With the tip of her finger she touched one of the caramels. It gave slightly. Her finger came away with a little cap of stickiness. Before she could stop herself, she gave it a lick.
Delicious. Heavenly. Cautiously, she pried the whole caramel free and then popped it in her mouth.
It melted slowly, releasing an intense, creamy flavor like nothing she’d ever tasted before. She pulled another candy off and slid it onto her tongue.
The front door of the house blew open. A little old bubby lady wearing a red kerchief tied in a large knot under her chin stood there watching her. A faded print housedress fell loosely down below her knees. Navy blue kneesocks and white tennis sneakers finished the fashion statement. She tipped her face to the night air and smiled, revealing large yellow-stained teeth. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Her nose stuck out like a carrot on a snowman, but the rest of her face was worn and sunken. She could have been anywhere between eighty and three hundred years old. She sniffed the air and squinted at Feenix. Feenix stared at her.
“Believe it or not, dearie, I was considered a great beauty in my youth. Why don’t you come in? Come in out of this damp and nasty bog-hole of a night.”
“Excuse me,” Feenix said. “I didn’t mean to disturb anybody. The wind’s just been crazy out here and I got lost.”
From inside the house, a high eager voice called out, “Has she come?”
The woman leaned forward and seemed to sniff at Feenix. “Yes. It is the one we’re waiting for.”
“Well, why are you standing there? Bring her in and shut the door.”
The woman reached out and took hold of Feenix’s hand.
Feenix tried to step backward but found that her feet had gone funny on her. They had a rubbery feel.
“Oh, now,” the woman chuckled. “Don’t be shy. Come in. Come in.” The voice was coming from far, far away. Long cold fingers enclosed her wrist. Unable to help herself, Feenix found herself stumbling forward across the doorway.
CHAPTER SIX
Forgetting
When Edward got to school the next morning, he stared at the wide front doors and had this uncomfortable feeling he had forgotten something. Before he could figure out what it was, a voice yelled out, “Heads up!” and a ball came flying through the air and landed in his hands.
“Over here! Over here! I’m open,” Danton yelled. “Pass it back!”
Clumsily, Edward passed him the ball. No sooner had the ball landed safely in Danton’s eager hands than the sound of the first bell drilled through the brick walls of the building and pierced the brain of any student still loitering around outside.
Mysteriously, it appeared that Danton had decided to adopt Edward. They were in most of the same morning classes together and in the ones where the teachers allowed them to choose their own seats, Danton chose to sit down right next to him. Edward did not pay much attention to this. He continued to be distracted by this feeling that he’d forgotten something. It was like trying to get hold of a dream or get at an itch that was in a really difficult-to-reach place.
He walked through the hallways, frowning, staring around him. Something was missing.
He combed the hallways and the classrooms. What was it? Had they taken a bulletin board down? Didn’t there used to be a water fountain over there?
Well, whatever it was, it sure wasn’t Danton. In gym class, he was on Edward’s tail the whole time, pushing him to run and jump and catch. Edward’s feet, of course, acted like they belonged to some distant relative in Australia, but when, now and then, he got it right, made a good pass or actually got the ball in the hoop, Danton would get all happy and excited and would yell, “You see? You see? That’s what I’m telling you!”
He was such a nice guy that Edward couldn’t help trying his best.
Danton’s lunch tray was amazing.
There was a plateful of something that bore a distant resemblance to spaghetti and meatballs. Beside it was a sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap. Next to that was a styrofoam carton with chicken nuggets. Additionally, he had two bananas and a small plastic cup of applesauce. He began with the spaghetti. He plunged in with his spork as if he had been lost in the wilderness for days.
While he ate, he talked and asked Edward questions. He’d taken his little brother to Coney Island last weekend. Had Edward ever been on the Cyclone? Did Edward do any martial arts? No? It was the best discipline and good for coordination and the core. It was just what Edward needed. Maybe Edward would like to take a trial class at his dojo. Edward nodded and did not mention that he had no idea what a dojo was. Did Edward play World of Warcraft? Edward did not. He knew this was a video game, but he did not mention that his aunt allowed no video games. What did Edward do after school?
Edward hesitated. “Not much. You know, TV, the computer, homework, thinking about things.”
Danton was eating the sandwich. It might have been bologna or might have been thin slices of rubber tire. When he was done he caught sight of the slice of bread that Edward hadn’t eaten. “You gonna eat that?”
Edward handed it to him silently. Danton examined it, then took a large bite. Then he took another. He finished the rest, closing his eyes as he chewed. When he was finished he opened his eyes and gazed curiously at Edward.
“What was that?”
“Anadama bread with honey and butter. My aunt made the bread herself.”
“Do you have any more?”
“That was the last piece.”
“Is there more at her house?”
“Her house is my house. I live with her. She made a couple of loaves yesterday.”
“She’s a genius.”
“I wouldn’t say that. She’s actually a wacko, but she’s a good cook. She teaches baking and stuff.”
“How’s she a wacko?”
He sighed. This was not easy to talk about, but Edward did not believe in telling untruths. “She believes in solstices and nature and saving the souls of spiders and stuff.”
“How come you live with her? Where are your parents?”
Edward paused again. The answer to this was always a conversational landmine. “Dead,” he told Danton at last.
It was funny how the other person always looked
so embarrassed at this news, like it was their own fault or something. “Oh, hey, I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. I don’t remember much about them.”
“You don’t have any brothers or sisters or anything?”
“No.” The look of sympathy on Danton’s face made Edward irritable. What would he do with a little brother or sister? “Listen,” Edward said, “Do you have the feeling that something’s missing?”
“What?” Danton blinked.
They both looked around the lunchroom. There was shouting and laughter, chairs scraping across floors. The troll ladies who served the food yelled at people to move along. Paper airplanes and crumpled balls of aluminum foil sailed through the air.
At the same moment, they both realized that Brigit had been watching them. She was seated across the long table a little ways down.
“Don’t stare at her like that,” Danton ordered. “It makes it worse.”
“It makes what worse?”
“That thing where she blushes. When you look right at her like that, it sets her off.”
“But why is she looking at us like that?”
Danton shrugged and smiled his big smile. “ ’Cause we’re so pretty?” He leaned over and grabbed a bruised apple that someone had left behind. “No point in wasting good food,” he said, and then took a bite.
Since Brigit had stopped speaking, her ears had grown much sharper. It wasn’t just that she heard the mice in the cabinets or her mother’s muffled crying or the sadness of her father’s footsteps when he returned late at night. Lately, she’d been hearing different sorts of things, strange things.
First, there had been that singing. It was high and silvery and vibrating, and Brigit hadn’t been able to figure out where it was coming from. She had first heard it when she was walking home from school along Ninth Street. It was so strange and lovely she decided to try to follow the sound, but the wind caught the notes and carried them away. Late that night she heard it again. The singing woke her and she lay there listening to it until she fell back asleep. Then she heard it again, in the morning, when she’d been sitting in science class. It went on for several days, just little scraps of melody floating by, the words sung in some language she didn’t recognize, and then it had stopped. No one else seemed to have noticed it at all.
Now today, there was something different. Not a song, just a girl’s voice. It was driving her crazy. She was sure she knew the person it belonged to, but she couldn’t think who it was. She’d been hearing it on and off all morning, but she could only catch a word or two, not enough to make any sense of. Whenever Brigit turned around to see who it could be, no one was there. Sometimes the girl sounded angry, but more often, she sounded afraid. Brigit found that every time silence fell, she was holding her breath, waiting to hear the voice again.
But when she waited, there was nothing.
At lunchtime—she wasn’t sure why—she took a seat close to where Edward and Danton were. What a strange morning. She wondered what they were doing sitting next to each other. They were about the last two people you’d expect to find hanging out together.
Danton was one of those guys who had shot up overnight. His voice had grown deep already, too. He was impossible to miss. When he came into a room, he lit up every corner of it. She was pretty sure he knew who she was. He knew who everybody was and everybody knew him. He just nodded at her when he went by, but she had the feeling that he got it. He knew how hard it was for her when people tried to get her to speak and he wasn’t interested in trying to get her to turn red. He probably wasn’t interested in her, period. But at least he didn’t torment her.
Edward never bothered her either, but that was because most of the time he seemed to be half asleep, like a bear trying to settle down into hibernation. He moved clumsily and he avoided talking, too. Maybe because his voice was still cracking all the time. In any case, today something was different about him. He appeared almost awake. He was sitting more or less upright and, every once in a while, he frowned and gazed around the room as if he, too, were looking for something.
She buried her nose in her book and when she looked up again, she saw Danton throwing grapes into the air and catching them in his mouth. Between swallows he talked to Edward, who looked like he was only half listening, though now and then he’d turn and stare at Danton. Then he’d start looking around the room again.
Brigit kept her eyes on the page, but she couldn’t concentrate. Suddenly, she could have sworn she heard it. The girl’s voice. She sat up with a start. It had come from somewhere in the back of the lunchroom. She knew the boys were staring at her, but she was too distracted to blush. She turned around quickly and searched the crowd, but, again, whoever she was looking for wasn’t there.
Science was their last class of the day.
Edward decided that the safest thing to do would be to go into Advanced Level Chill Mode. He felt this was what was needed in order to protect his health and sanity. It was a little bit drastic and carried its own dangers, but there had been far too much excitement today. In this mode he made a conscious effort to bring all his bodily functions to a near halt. It was similar to what was done to people when they were going to travel through space for extended periods of time. In order for Advanced Level Chill Mode to work in school, you needed to find a seat at the back of the classroom where the teacher wouldn’t notice that your body was no longer inhabited by a conscious human being. The danger was that you would be called upon and would, naturally, fail to hear a thing. Some teachers got all cranky when this happened.
He found a nice seat in the back corner by Mr. Ross’s treasure table. He scrunched himself down and proceeded to slow his various support systems: first respiration and heartbeat, then sensory awareness. As he drifted off, he heard Mr. Ross blabbering on about the Paleolithic Era and ice ages. He had just reached a pleasant state of semi-consciousness when a loud bang brought him rudely back to reality.
His eyes flew open.
Mr. Ross was glaring at the class. He picked up the big geology textbook and dropped it on the table again.
“Wake up, people! You think that was so long ago, two hundred thousand years? Two hundred thousand years is only a second, a tiny tick, in the grander scale of things.”
There was an uneasy shifting in seats.
“Okay! You people are way too comfortable for your own good! Hypothetical situation: Sudden time warp—we’ve been thrown back in time, say, around two hundred thousand years. We’re nearing the winter solstice just as we are now. You are young hunter-gatherers. The days, you have noticed, are shorter and shorter, the nights longer and longer. The situation does not look good. It’s cold. Nothing’s growing. One of your tribe left the shelter the other night to relieve himself and never returned. Probably eaten by some wild beast . . .”
Mr. Ross seemed to be waiting for someone to say something. But there was only silence. He went on.
“You know nothing at all about the laws of nature and the movements of the planets, but you know enough to know that if something doesn’t change soon, you will all be goners. What would you do?”
He waited again, expectantly, but still, there was no answer.
“C’mon, c’mon somebody. What do you think? What would you do?” Mr. Ross turned on Delilah.
“Delilah?”
She gave a bored shrug. “Pray?”
Everybody laughed.
Mr. Ross looked serious. “But she’s right, you know. This was almost certainly one of the fears that made humans begin to look for the gods.”
Edward noticed that several of the more marshmallow-brained glanced around nervously as if expecting some dude carrying a lightening bolt to jump out from under a chair.
Mr. Ross directed their gazes to the sky. “The sun will set even earlier today than yesterday. Tomorrow it will set even earlier. Dark will come on fast. What if the sun just vanishes? What then?”
Still no answer. Mr. Ross pointed to someone.
“We’d freeze to death?”
“Okay. Good. What else?” Mr. Ross pointed to Danton.
“Uh . . . since we wouldn’t be able to grow anything, there’ll be nothing to eat?”
“Yes.” Mr. Ross nodded. “Solstice. Does anybody know what the word means?”
Edward knew. His aunt was very serious about celebrating the solstices, but he felt no need to share this embarrassing fact.
Mr. Ross, however, apparently read his mind. “Edward?”
Edward debated with himself about claiming ignorance, but again, there was his inconvenient belief in telling the truth. “Well, ‘Sol’ means ‘sun.’ ‘Stice’ means ‘stop.’ ” That was as far as he would go.
But Mr. Ross nodded at him happily. “Exactly right. From the Latin. ‘Sun stoppage.’ The sun appears to stop in its tracks. There are two solstices each year. One occurs in December. One in June. In the northern hemisphere the days are now growing shorter and shorter. The ancient peoples considered this an extremely powerful time. In a few days the sun will appear to stop in its tracks and attempt to gather the strength it needs to begin its return. If things go wrong and we’re all plunged into darkness, well then, good-bye, my young friends. Back in ancient times, as humans were growing more at home on earth, they came up with all sorts of tricks and stories and rituals to encourage the sun to gather the strength to win out over the darkness. Some were harmless enough. They decorated evergreens in the hopes of bringing back the green things that gave them food to eat. They hung wreaths to keep the circle of life going. They peered into the darkness watching for the enormous great-horned stag who they believed was strong enough to win the battle against winter.
“But other traditions evolved that were more—colorful. The Greeks, for instance, would choose a strong, handsome young man around this time of year and bring him to the handmaidens of their god Dionysus. The handmaidens would ply him with wine and send him running naked into the woods. They’d give him a good head start. Then they’d pray and burn incense, drink themselves into a fine madness, and strip themselves naked.”
