by Abby Smith
Bob maneuvered next to her and took the tray of cookies from her with oven-mittened hands before she could toss it to the floor. She sped toward the living room, muttering something about Vala and needing a book.
I followed behind her. She began clawing through the books stacked on top of the coffee table.
“What are you searching for?”
She slid books off the table one after the other until finally she grabbed one. “Here it is! I found it!” She flipped it open and fanned through the pages. A yellowed, folded piece of notebook paper fell onto the floor.
I held onto Pettikin’s legs and bent down to pick it up for her. Mrs. Widgit snatched it out of my hand before I had fully straightened up. She unfolded it and scanned it quickly.
“This is what we need, come on!”
She snapped the book shut and tucked it under her left arm. I glanced at the title The Importance of Color. Clutching the piece of notebook paper in her right hand, she strode toward the front door.
Andie joined me in the front hallway and followed us outside.
Mrs. Widgit marched across the front yard toward the western side of the cottage. “Vala? Vala!” she hollered.
We jogged after her, but only went a couple of steps before I gasped and stopped.
The cottage was a hideous shade of light brownish-purple. The shutters were pea green.
“Is ‘vomit’ a color?” Andie asked.
“Holy crap,” I said.
“Vala!” Mrs. Widgit bellowed. His blond head appeared from around the side of the house.
“Something wrong?”
“You can’t just change the color of the cottage willy-nilly like that!”
“I can’t?” He walked over to us.
“No you can’t! It makes Patricia suspicious, and that makes things difficult for Dan.”
Difficult for Dan? Dad was in on all of this?
Mrs. Widgit whipped the book out from under her arm, smoothed the crumpled piece of paper in her hand on top of it.
“May spent months coming up with these conversion charts that use a reasonable spectrum of colors for the Earth people!”
Vala took the book from her and ran a hand through his hair, seeming contrite. I wanted to laugh at the complete reversal of their roles from their previous argument. He squinted down at the paper, pacing slowly as he read.
“This is fascinating,” he said. “I’m impressed May was able to figure this out.”
I edged closer toward him, dying to see what was on the paper. When I finally got close enough to peek at it I was disappointed. I was just a conversion table, with colors listed in one column equating to one or more colors in a second column, and some notes Aunt May had scrawled in the margins. I did notice that the colors in the left hand column tended to be gaudier and the ones in the right more neutral.
“Impressed or not, Vala, you’ve got to change it before someone sees!”
Vala ignored her. “It’s quite interesting. As long as the trim is bright enough it pulls up the frequency of the rest of the surface, and if you include enough colors, according to May the sum of the frequencies matters more than—”
“Vala!”
Vala laughed, “OK, OK.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you need to change the color of the cottage at all? I thought Aunt May just liked to paint,” I said.
“Well, an oversimplified answer is that activating the Gateways requires specific energies. Different energies are available on Earth at different times. For example, summer is very different from autumn. Sometimes, we have to make slight changes in order to have the right energy available to perform certain tasks. Right now, I need slightly different energy frequencies available to me so I can more easily reactivate the Nexus Gateway. Once it’s reactivated, we can change the cottage back to the way it was before.”
He handed the book and paper to Mrs. Widgit and turned toward the cottage. He closed his eyes rubbed his hands together.
Andie grabbed my sleeve and pulled me away from him.
He raised his arms above his head, palms open. I heard a kind of sucking noise and then everything became silent—so silent that I put one hand up to my ears, which felt like they were stuffed with cotton. White-violet light pulsed from Vala’s hands and suddenly everything went into photo-negative—what was light before was dark and what was dark was light. I probably should have been terrified, but strangely, I had no reaction at all, as if suddenly being in a photonegative version of my world was completely normal.
The low rumbling sound started again, and a second pulse of light shot out from Vala’s hands. A shimmering wave of energy rolled toward the cottage which began rattling and shaking. As the wave washed over the cottage, the color changed from vomit-and-green to light yellow with bright turquoise trim. As soon as the wave reached the far end of the cottage, the rumbling stopped, and the world returned to normal.
Mrs. Widgit’s whole body relaxed into a slouch. “Much better!”
Vala seemed a little tired, but he was still smiling. “Well, we don’t want to offend the neighbors.”
“Forget the neighbors. We have a much bigger problem,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I pointed up to the main house. My father was running down the lane toward us, one hand holding his unbuttoned sweater closed, the other clamping an old wool cap to his head, Socrates bounding after him.
10
“Oh good, it’s the obstacle!” Vala said cheerfully. “I thought that might get his attention.”
“You wanted him to see? You wanted him to come down here?” I was aghast.
“I needed him to come down here. There’s something we need to discuss.”
Andie and I exchanged panic stricken glances. Was there even a standard grounding period for trying to leave one’s home dimension with a gnome?
Pettikin rocked back and forth on my shoulders making a breathy, high-pitched squeal like a tea kettle. Vala walked over to him, arm outstretched.
“Here, Pettikin, try my shoulders for a bit. I’ll keep you safe.”
Pettikin scrambled from my shoulders up to Vala’s. I briefly considered whether I felt jealous that he preferred the Guardian to me, but then Vala rested one hand lightly on my shoulder, and I decided that I really didn’t care at all.
“What’s he saying?” Andie asked. Dad was yelling something as he ran.
“‘Oh’? Something with an ‘oh’? Sort of an ‘ohhhh’ sound?” Mrs. Widgit offered.
“What, you mean like, ‘Noooo’?” I asked as it became clear that was the word my father was howling over and over as he ran.
Socrates overtook Dad and arrived first. I watched with horror as he launched himself at Vala, who fortunately seemed to be a dog person. Guardian. Whatever. He intercepted Socrates in mid-flight and rumpled the fur on his head.
“Who’s a good doggy? Are you a good doggy?”
Socrates mopped Vala’s face with kisses, then plopped down on his haunches next to him, a love-struck expression on his face.
“Noooo!” Dad rounded the corner where the lane turned toward the cottage and hammered toward us, punctuating each stride with a syllable. “No, no, no, no, no!” He arrived in front of us, bent over, hands on his thighs, breathing heavily.
“Hello, Dan.” Vala’s voice was gentle, his hand on my shoulder again.
Dad’s head snapped up.
“Vala? Oh no,” he groaned.
“Wait, you know each other?” I asked, incredulous.
Vala laughed.
“Now Dan,” Mrs. Widgit’s voice was warm and maternal, “why don’t we all just go into the cottage for a moment? I can make some tea, and there should be fresh cookies waiting by now…”
“Cookies? Oh no.”
I had no idea what I should say. I was very aware of Vala’s hand on my shoulder. It felt like a protective force field formed around me, as if he were pouring strength into me.
Dad seemed to notice this as well. “I�
�m too late, aren’t I?”
“Pretty much,” Vala said lightly.
Pettikin peeked out from behind Vala’s head, his curiosity getting the better of him.
My father gasped which caused Pettikin to yelp, and in one ill-thought-out moment, he leapt from Vala’s shoulders high-dive style, toward mine.
“Pettikin, what are you…’ It was clear he had overshot, but I somehow managed to lunge underneath him and catch him before he hit the ground. He scrambled up to my shoulder in a flurry of arms and clogs, clawing my face along the way and leaving my hair disheveled. He breathed heavily next to my ear.
I straightened up and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Uh, Dad, this is Pettikin. Pettikin Periwinkle. From Arcorn. He’s a gnome. Pettikin, this is my father. He knew Aunt May.”
“How do you do?” Pettikin squeaked.
Dad looked from me to Vala and then back again.
“Explain.”
“Why don’t we all go inside like Viola suggested. It will be more comfortable to talk in there,” Vala said.
Dad’s face was ashen. He turned and walked toward the cottage, muttering to himself. I felt unsettled, like the ultimate authority figure in my life suddenly wasn’t anymore.
Vala pressed his hand against my back to move me in the direction of the cottage.
Andie joined me. “We are so screwed,” she fretted, glancing up toward the main house, as if she were expecting her parents to show up.
Mrs. Widgit was walking a few steps in front of us. “Maybe not,” she said. “You may have secrets, but it would appear Allie’s dad has a few, too. That should level the playing field a bit.”
Andie snorted. “He’s her dad. I don’t think that playing field is going to be level anytime soon.”
I didn’t say anything, just followed them toward the cottage, staring straight ahead.
Socrates pushed through the door ahead of us and ran into the kitchen. Bob had become an insanely efficient baking machine. Trays of freshly baked cookies cooled on the counter, and more trays were lined up next to the oven, ready to be baked. Bob stared into the oven, a new tray ready to go in his left hand. He glanced up at us as we walked in.
“Who is going to eat all of these?” I asked. No one answered me.
Professor Theopolous cleared away half of the kitchen table and sat with his arms folded across his chest. He was staring across the table at my father, who sat across from him with his head in his hands.
Mrs. Widgit picked up the tea kettle from the stovetop and filled it with water. Pettikin slid off my shoulders, darted across the kitchen floor and climbed onto Socrates’ back. Socrates thumped his tail against the cupboards.
Vala walked to the kitchen table and stood next to Dad without saying anything.
My father didn’t lift his head from his hands.
“You promised.”
“I kept my promise. She came to me.”
Dad dropped his hands to the table and raised his head. “How is that possible?”
“The gnome helped.”
“What are you talking about? What promise?” I asked.
Dad had a strange expression on his face, something between anxiety and resignation.
“Did you really seek him out? Did you really somehow manage to approach him on your own?”
“Who, Vala?”
“Yes, Vala!”
“Well, yeah, I mean, we needed his help to get Pettikin home, so we had to go ask him, if that’s what you mean. Pettikin showed me how to get through his Gateway I guess.”
“Was this May’s idea? Was the gnome May’s idea?”
“Dad!”
Pettikin sat on Socrates’ back, his head tilted to one side, observing my father.
“I know it must be tempting for you to think something like that, Dan, but you know better. May wouldn’t use her friends that way.” Vala’s voice was calm.
“She might not use him, but he could be in on it.” Dad glared at Pettikin, who cringed and ducked down behind Socrates’ head.
“Dad, stop it! You’re scaring him!”
“Well how else do you explain it?”
I had never seen my father like this before. He was usually so calm and reasonable.
“Explain what? Pettikin didn’t want to come here. He came here accidentally because he was worried about Aunt May. The problem is, once he got here, Aunt May wasn’t here to take him home.”
I assumed at this point that Dad knew the whole Aunt-May-is-a-Gatekeeper backstory without my having to explain it.
“And I suppose you think you’re going to do it?”
“Well, I, uh…” I glanced at Vala.
“Because if you are, someone here found a way around my agreement with May, and I want to know who it was.”
Dad glared across the table at the Professor who regarded him from behind folded arms without changing his expression.
“What agreement?” I asked.
Mrs. Widgit set a steaming mug of tea down in front of my father.
“Don’t look at us,” she said lightly. “We assumed Allie was May’s apprentice all along and were quite shocked to find out that wasn’t the case.”
“What agreement?” I was almost shouting now.
Dad seemed to suddenly remember that I was the daughter, and he was the father. He sighed, ran one hand across his thinning hair, and relaxed back in his chair.
“I’m sorry, Allie. I’m not doing this properly. I know this must all seem very strange to you and I should be explaining things, not demanding answers from you.”
I was so not prepared to deal with consoling my dad on top of everything else. I shifted my weight uncomfortably.
“What agreement?” I asked again, in a calmer tone.
Dad leaned forward and wrapped his hands around the mug of tea in front of him, then let it go and sat back in his chair again without taking a sip.
“What have they told you so far?”
“That Aunt May was a Gatekeeper. That this is a forbidden world. That when she died, the Guardians closed all the Gateways here, including the one Pettikin needs to get home.” I hesitated, and then added, “And that Aunt May apparently never trained a replacement Gatekeeper, which is a big part of the reason we’re in this mess.”
Dad pressed his lips together, and the corners of his mouth turned down slightly.
“So, as you’ve obviously figured out for yourself, your great aunt was a little different from most people.”
“That’s an understatement,” Andie muttered.
“May was obviously quite fond of you, Allie, and she did have her eye on you to be her apprentice from when you were very young.”
I couldn’t believe it. Part of me had been expecting my father to contradict the absurdity of the past two days—to offer some rational explanation for what was going on, to make things go back to normal. Instead he was offering up the crazy right along with the rest of them.
“You knew about all of this? How could you not have said anything to me all this time?”
“As I’m sure you’re starting to figure out, I couldn’t really say anything about all of this. It’s not something one talks about in casual conversation with everyday people.”
“What about Mom, is she in on it, too?”
“No, your Mother doesn’t know. She doesn’t need to. She’s a very practical and rational person. It would just upset her to know about ...this,” he waved his hand in a vague gesture that encompassed the entire cookie-filled strangeness of the kitchen and its current inhabitants.
“If she doesn’t need to know, why do you need to know?”
Dad smiled slightly.
“Because I was Aunt May’s ally.”
The timer bell dinged. Bob opened the oven, exchanged the baked and unbaked cookie trays, and closed the door again, all within a matter of seconds. He set the new cookies out to cool on the counter, hardly paying any attention to the conversation.
Mrs. Widgit handed me a mug of tea.
My hands were cold again, so I wrapped them around the warm mug.
“What’s an ally?”
“An ally is someone who assists a Gatekeeper in his or her home dimension. They are more of an integral part of society and help smooth things over for the Gatekeepers so they can work more easily in the world without attracting too much attention by their…well, their oddities,” she replied as she continued distributing tea to everyone in the room. I noticed no one was drinking any.
I thought about how Dad had always been able to keep the townspeople from asking too many questions about Aunt May, the way he kept Mom from worrying too much about the color of the cottage. I wondered if he would have been able to do that if he didn’t appear so normal on the outside. He was a well-respected minister at a local church—people expected normalcy from him, stability. If he tolerated Aunt May’s behavior, it was understood others could, too, without worrying. It was the perfect cover.
“But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Dad. “If Aunt May wanted me to be her apprentice why didn’t you say something to me?”
“Allie, you were only six years old. I realize you were and are precocious, but I really didn’t think you were in a position to be making those kinds of decisions at the time. Decisions which would radically alter the type of life you were going to have.”
He leaned forward again. “What I did do, when May approached me about training you as her apprentice, was come to an agreement with her. The agreement was that May could not tell you about what she did or approach you about any of this until you were eighteen, at which time you would legally be an adult and could make the decision for yourself.”
“I can make decisions for myself now!”
Dad ignored my outburst. “Aunt May agreed to the terms of my contract, but with one caveat—that she could tell you the full truth at any time if you approached her…or, by extension, him.” Dad gestured toward Vala. “Since, to my thinking, it didn’t seem likely you would approach Aunt May, and it never occurred to me it would even be possible for you to contact Vala on your own, I agreed.”
