The Key & the Flame

by Claire M. Caterer

  “What? No—Mr. Gallaway gave it to me.”

  “And now you want to give it back. When he’s not here.” Everett reached a hand toward the chest.

  Holly slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch them! You don’t know what they do.”

  “Oi, take it easy. I’ve got more business here than you. He’s my neighbor.” Everett looked at her keenly. “What do these keys do, anyway?”

  “Nothing, it’s just . . . ” She sighed, wishing he’d go away, and knowing he wasn’t going to. “I’ve seen some strange things since I got this key.”

  “Like at the castle. You saw something there.”

  “I told you—I just felt sick.”

  Everett smirked. “Are you afraid of something?”

  “Why do you keep saying that? I’m no more scared than you!”

  He shrugged, glancing away at the back garden as if he didn’t even care about the chest of keys. “Look, if you don’t want the key anymore, you don’t have to give it back. I’ll take it.”

  Holly looked down at Everett’s small white hand, which he held out patiently. The key tingled in her palm. It was very quiet; Everett was holding his breath. His fingers twitched.

  “No,” she said finally. “It’s mine.” She assumed her Mom voice. “Come on, we shouldn’t be here.”

  Everett stood staring at the iron chest. Holly motioned to him. “Do you want him to come back and catch us in here?”

  “Okay, I’m coming.” He lingered behind while she stepped onto the garden path. And then Holly did spy Mr. Gallaway around the corner, walking up the road from town, a straw bag over one arm.

  “Everett!” she whispered fiercely. “He’s coming!”

  The old man disappeared from view as he approached the front door. What would he do if he found them there? Take back his key?

  “Come on,” said Holly. “What are you doing?” She heard Mr. Gallaway in the house now, and he was heading for the kitchen—and the door to the screened-in porch. A moment later Everett appeared, slamming the screen door behind him. The two of them scurried out through the back gate and around the side of the neighboring cottage. Mr. Gallaway walked through his kitchen, humming, oblivious.

  “Okay,” Holly breathed, emerging with Everett on Hodges Close. She liked Mr. Gallaway, but she knew he wouldn’t want them snooping in his private things. Her stomach calmed as they approached Number One.

  “Why do you keep following me?” she asked Everett.

  “Because I know you’re hiding something.” He paused at her front door. “I’d better get home. I’m glad you kept your key.”

  Holly watched him walk back down the lane. She liked Everett—mostly, when he wasn’t being irritating—but he made her the tiniest bit uncomfortable, too. He was smart, and she couldn’t put him off for long. If she wanted to talk to Mr. Gallaway and find out what was going on, she’d have to do it soon.

  —

  Everett tried his best to walk in his usual way back down the close to Clement Lane. He didn’t want Holly to see him hurry, didn’t want her to see how hot his face was nor how queasy he felt, didn’t want her to hear the voice in his chest that drummed one thing over and over: Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  The minute he was back in his bedroom, after passing his mother in the hall—“Yeah, Mum, castle was great, love the Shepards, see you later”—he sat down on his bed, took a deep breath, and pulled the key from his pocket.

  He wasn’t a thief by nature. Oh, once he’d found a five-pound note in the playground at school and kept it, even after he’d heard Sean Fellowes was hunting for it and was also looking to beat the head in of whoever took it. Fellowes was a bully anyway, and Everett was glad he’d kept it. He’d spent it on sweets and a comic book.

  This was definitely different. He’d never seen the trunk of keys before, though he’d been to Mr. Gallaway’s house loads of times to borrow gardening tools for his mother. Funny how it had appeared there just when Holly seemed to need it, wanting to give her key back. In fact, Everett thought, turning the key over in his hands, it had appeared just when he, Everett, had needed it too.

  Because wasn’t he just thinking about Holly’s key and how Mr. Gallaway had never given him anything, certainly not anything as cool as this? He held it up to the light. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Holly’s, except to see that it was large and forged like the old keys had been, with a big loop and rough cuts. This one was very like it. Along the shaft Everett could see some tiny, pointed marks cut into the iron, like letters, or maybe teethmarks. If he took his key back to Darton Castle, could he see whatever Holly had seen? People, she’d said. People in fancy dress, so real she’d thought they were put there for tourists. But something about them had scared her. And what about the wood? Had she seen people there, too? Why wouldn’t she tell him about it?

  There was a reason Mr. Gallaway had left the trunk out in the open, Everett decided. It was valuable, and the screened-in porch was never locked. He’d left it there for them to find—for both of them to find. Surely he’d meant for Everett to have a key too. It only made sense. So he hadn’t really stolen anything at all. He’d just gotten his key in a different way.

  He liked how it felt in his hand—warm, then cold, then warm—almost like it had a pulse. It made his heart tremble uncomfortably, but the tighter he gripped the key, the calmer he became. He had something incredibly special, he thought, something nobody else had (well, except Holly). Maybe the key opened all sorts of things. He could probably use it like a skeleton key and get into the headmaster’s office or a locked shop after hours. Not that he would, he assured himself. Still . . .

  He slid it into his back pocket. Holly was sure to go back to the wood soon, now that she’d decided to keep the key. She would show him exactly what to do to make the key work.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  Holly’s Choice

  It was odd for Holly to wake up in England the next morning; but it was normal for Holly’s mother to be searching for her briefcase and coffee and house keys. Holly’s father lingered at the kitchen table with the paper and then drove her mother to the train station. When he got back, he took a shower and then announced he would be in his office if anyone needed him.

  Having Mr. Shepard in charge was ideal. He wouldn’t ask a lot of questions about where Holly was off to. She cleaned her glasses carefully with water instead of just the hem of her T-shirt. In her pile of clothes she found a bandana and tied it around her hair. Then she emptied her backpack of junk left over from the flight and filled it with two apples, a couple of blueberry scones, a bottle of water, and a book she was reading. Her Swiss Army pocketknife she shoved in her back pocket. Maybe she’d find a real rock wall to climb. Finally, thinking of rocks, she found a few Band-Aids and packed them, too. She wasn’t sure what she’d find in the forest, but it was best to be prepared. She planned to spend most of the day exploring it—as soon as she’d asked Mr. Gallaway a few questions.

  Just as she had everything ready and had secured permission from her father, she opened the back door to find Everett there. Didn’t he have anything else to do?

  “What do you want now?” Holly asked.

  “Are you going somewhere?” Everett stepped into the house, eyeing her backpack.

  “Ben’s awake, I think,” said Holly. “He fixed his game.”

  “Yeah? Maybe I’ll go up.”

  “Sure. He’d like that.”

  Holly waited until Everett was at the top of the stairs and she heard Ben greet him. Then she stole out the back door.

  As she stepped through the garden, she glanced along the row of cottages next to hers. She saw Mr. Gallaway bent over the rosebushes of Number Three. He glanced up and smiled. She paused a moment; she did want to talk to him, and he couldn’t dodge her in the wood this time. She walked down to Number Three and stood in the arbor.

  “Pruning roses,” he said, as if she’d asked him a question. “It is tricky work. Best not to be distracted.”
He clipped a small branch and squinted at it. Holly wasn’t sure what to say, or if she should leave him alone, but then he added, “Sit if you must. Did you not stop by my cottage yesterday, Miss Holly?”

  Holly’s face heated up. “I . . . You weren’t home.” Somehow he knew she’d been at his house. Did he know she’d opened the trunk? Holly sat down at the garden table, laying her backpack on the flagstones. The old man glanced at her with raised eyebrows. “Um . . . yeah,” Holly started. “Everett Shaw took Ben and me to the castle on the hill yesterday, and some weird things happened. But just to me.” She drew the key out of her pocket.

  “Keys are forged for many purposes,” said Mr. Gallaway, turning back to the roses. It was somehow easier to talk to him when he wasn’t looking at her. “As I say, yours unlocks things.”

  “But it’s just a key. . . . Isn’t it?” Holly knew what her mother would say: The key was probably coated with some kind of substance that gave you hallucinations and stomachaches and vitamin deficiencies and high blood pressure. But some wild, caged-bird part of Holly’s insides told her different. Something inside her whispered a word, a word forbidden by reason and mothers and Ms. Noring and Holly’s entire fifth-grade curriculum.

  Magic.

  “I think,” said Mr. Gallaway, snipping away at the roses, “the evidence suggests that what you have is not just a key, Miss Holly.”

  “But I saw people,” said Holly, feeling breathless. “It was like I was there—not even like a movie. They were in different clothes—like costumes—and there was a table with food, and musicians, and a fire in the fireplace. But sort of faded. And then . . . ” A shiver, like a trickle of ice water, fingered down her back. “I don’t know. Ben was there too, Mr. Gallaway. With the ghost people. But how could he be? At first I thought it was just someone who looked like him, but then he saw me, too, and he was scared. And some guy with a sword came running at me. . . . ”

  The old man sat back on his heels and squinted up at Holly through the morning sun. “But you weren’t hurt.”

  “No,” said Holly. “I dropped the key and everything disappeared. But now I’m not sure he could’ve hurt me anyway. They weren’t exactly solid, somehow. But I know it wasn’t a dream or anything, even though Everett kept saying no one was there.”

  The old man sniffed and dabbed at his nose with a red handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. “Hmph. It seems to me you would know a good deal more about it than he. The key wasn’t given to Everett.” Mr. Gallaway coughed into the handkerchief and spat into the dirt. “A gift is a powerful thing, Miss Holly. That key knows who it belongs to. A theft, on the other hand, has power too, but of a different sort.”

  Holly laid the key on the table, her face feeling hot. “I would never, Mr. Gallaway.”

  His blue eyes softened. “I thought not.”

  “So I can see things other people can’t?”

  The old man put down the pruners and pulled his pipe from his pocket. “There’s a sort of filter—a curtain, if you like. Some people can see through it.”

  Maybe that’s what Everett had meant to say. “Like layers,” Holly said half to herself. “Layers between times. Or—”

  Or places.

  “That oak tree in the forest,” Holly said, talking fast now that she had his attention. “Where I was yesterday. The key opened the tree. And it wasn’t like a curtain. It was a real door. The other trees have keyholes too. Are they doors too? Do they go through to somewhere?”

  The old man shrugged, frowning at his pipe as he tapped it against his palm.

  “I could get there, couldn’t I? To where the lords and ladies were—where Ben was, or the Ben look-alike. I could really visit them, not just see them like ghosts.”

  “Now that,” said Mr. Gallaway, holding the pipe up to the sun and squinting, “would be a real adventure.”

  Holly was sitting very still, but her heart galloped in her chest as if she’d just run a mile. Was he really saying the key was magic? That she wasn’t sick or drugged or crazy? But then . . .

  “Perhaps you’ve come to return your gift?”

  Holly opened her mouth, but for a moment she had trouble saying anything. Sure, the idea of a magical journey was all very exciting, if it were true, but it wasn’t all friendly and pleasant, either. Did she want to return the gift? “That other place,” she said. “It looked dangerous. They were running at me with swords and everything. And that Ben clone . . . It was like he needed me to help him. But what could I do, even if I could get there? I’m just a kid. Do you think he’s in trouble, Mr. Gallaway?”

  “If you’re asking me to guarantee your safety, or your brother’s, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said the old man. “Great opportunities involve great risk. Surely you know that. I believe you climb rocks at home?”

  “Sure, at the mall,” she said slowly. How could he know that? “But I have a harness and a belay. It’s all safe and stuff. Or my mom would never let me do it.”

  “That’s the difference, you see. No harness and helmets on a real adventure.” The old man smiled. “There are no guarantees, but there are great rewards. You, Miss Holly, have something locked inside yourself that begs to be liberated. Opportunities come but rarely, and are never repeated.” He pocketed the pipe and held out his hand. “Should you return that key, your biggest danger might be a stinging nettle or two.”

  Holly looked at Mr. Gallaway’s hand. A hundred lines crisscrossed his palm. She knew that the line extending from between the thumb and forefinger down to the wrist was called the lifeline. But Mr. Gallaway seemed to have two lifelines. Maybe it was because he was such a very old man? She picked up the key from the table where she’d laid it. It tingled with warmth. She thought of that round-robin of activities at home—school, the mall, the park, the swimming pool—and how much she’d wanted to escape them. She had traveled almost five thousand miles from home—wasn’t that an adventure? But even here, in Oxford, in London, there would be seat belts and looking both ways before crossing and synchronized watches and be back before dark. Going to this place—if she could get there—would be something else altogether. Anyplace you got to by magic had to have magic inside it, and she would never have the chance to see that again, not in her social studies textbook or on the top of the Eiffel Tower. She had one chance. She’d have to take it or leave it.

  “Once you give the key back, it’s mine forever,” said Mr. Gallaway.

  “No,” said Holly, and slipped it back into her pocket. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  The Strongest Beech

  Thanks to her compass, Holly knew the way quite well. At the edge of the forest, she pulled the bottle of water and one of the scones out of her backpack. The key, nestled in her pocket, hummed in tune with the forest. As she stepped farther in, a wood warbler trilled from the treetops.

  It was on the bank of the stream that she first heard the crack of a twig. Somewhere nearby, leaves rustled. Her own feet made almost no noise in the wood. Holly stopped and listened; even the animals quieted.

  She knew what the silence meant: She was being followed. She peered through the trees, but they were still. There was nothing to do but go on. Holly swallowed the last of her scone and jumped the rocks in the stream. As she turned the corner on the far bank, she heard a clumsy splash behind her, along with some fierce whispering. She hurried on to the glade, hoping to get there before she was caught. The footsteps pursuing her grew louder and more careless. Finally she stumbled into the glade and caught her breath, then sprinted to the oak tree and pulled out the key.

  “Stop! You’d better tell us what you’re doing!”

  Her heart sank. She knew that whiny voice. And then another, accusingly: “Thought you said you were all out of scones.”

  Holly turned around, though she knew who was there. If she were going to handpick her companions, Everett might have made the cut; Ben, definitely not.

  Holly thrust the key int
o her pocket and turned around to face them both. “What do you mean, what I’m doing? You mean walking in the woods?”

  “That key!” said Ben, panting for breath. “She’s doing something with the key, right, Everett?”

  “I’m not surprised you wouldn’t understand someone wanting to explore the forest, outside, where there aren’t any stupid computer games or electric outlets,” said Holly, putting away the water bottle. This would be the perfect moment to shrug, the way big sisters are entitled to do, and wander off down another path. But it was also the moment she’d been waiting for, and hadn’t Mr. Gallaway made it sound like this was the right time, as if there might be a wrong time?

  “You can’t just hog all the cool stuff for yourself,” said Ben.

  “What cool stuff? It’s just a key!” Holly said.

  “So let’s see it,” said Everett. Then, more quickly than Holly would’ve thought possible, the boys flanked her. Ben was still panting, and Everett had his hand out, the way he had at Mr. Gallaway’s cottage the day before.

  “I told you, it’s mine,” she said, and then Everett’s pale hand shot out and wrenched it from her.

  “Hey!” She reached around to grab it back, but he cradled it against his chest, then darted back toward the path. Holly ran after him and grabbed one arm—the wrong one—and wrestled him to the ground. But his fingers closed so tightly around the key that she couldn’t pry them apart. “Hand it over,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Make her tell us what it does!” Ben said.

  Everett twisted in the grass and stood up, breathing hard, his closed fist above his head. “Come on, Holly,” Everett added. “We know something’s up with your key.”

  Holly sighed. “All right, fine. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. But you aren’t going to believe me, and anyway, Mr. Gallaway gave me the key, for me to use.”