Pettikin

by Abby Smith

  “What the—”

  “Fortunately Chief Miller is an old friend of mine and recognized how ridiculous it sounded, considering you girls have never been in trouble. He decided to come talk to me first. I convinced him there was nothing to the story, especially considering that Mr. Cutter was the one trespassing. The whole thing was bizarre, and about halfway through the conversation, it dawned on me that it might just be an elaborate diversion.”

  “Diverting attention from the sslorcs trying to get through the Gateway down here,” Andie said.

  Dad listened carefully as Andie retold the story of what had gone down dirt-side while Pettikin and I were in the dimensions.

  Mrs. Widgit handed me a warm mug and steered me toward the table.

  “Sit!” She pulled back a chair for me.

  I sat, and sipped. She had mixed a little coffee into some cocoa to make a sort of mocha for me. The sharp, bitter taste of the coffee cut through the numbness I felt since we returned and made me feel a little better.

  Dad took a cup of coffee from Mrs. Widgit and slid into the chair across from me. “So, what happened on the other side, Al?” he asked, his tone artificially casual.

  Everyone pretended to be very engrossed in their drinks and tasks, and barely interested in what I had to say.

  I took a deep breath and started talking. Andie gave up her pretense of not listening, watching me intently and becoming more and more incredulous as I described the maze and the warriors in the red dimension. When I got to the part about the pastel mountain cats, Professor Theopolous gasped so comically that we all turned toward him.

  “You had a run in with the knarren?” He pronounced the k and rolled the r’s dramatically.

  Dad sprayed the mouthful of coffee he had just sipped across the table onto me. Pettikin appeared from behind Socrates, his face ghost white, and screamed until he fell over backwards in a faint.

  “Sorry, Al,” Dad handed me his napkin.

  “What are the knarren?” I asked, mopping myself off. Socrates licked Pettikin’s face.

  “One of the deadliest creatures in the universe. They can obliterate anything they want with the white light from their eyes.” Professor Theopolous’ voice was strained.

  “Oh. Well these ones were friendly.”

  “Friendly?” Pettikin gurgled from behind Socrates, apparently revived by the face licking.

  “Well, once I got them calmed down and gave them cookies.”

  Professor Theopolous was incredulous as I explained the rest of the story with the purple hedgehogs (truffalos, he called them) and how the knarren defended us. When I finished, he pressed his palms into the edge of the table and leaned back in his chair, seeming, I thought, a little impressed. “Getting the knarren to work for you—I never would have thought of it.”

  Dad shook his head. “I guess you’ve got more of Aunt May in you than even I realized, Al.” He blew on his coffee and took another sip.

  I continued the story, glossing over the part about the bat creatures a bit because Dad had a sort of strained expression on his face listening to it. I glanced at Andie instead. Her face was grim but her countenance was one of solidarity, which was easier to take.

  “So that’s it,” I said finally. “We tried, but we didn’t make it.” I set my mug down on the table and leaned back in my chair, hoping to convey a sense of finality about the whole matter.

  An uneasy silence filled the room.

  The phone rang. Mrs. Widgit grabbed it.

  “Hello? Oh hello, Pat. It’s Viola Widgit. Yes, Theo and I are down here with the two delinquents—Dan was just telling us the whole story.”

  I pushed away from the table and went into the living room with Andie following me. Mrs. Widgit’s voice faded, “Oh yes, I’ll be sure to tell them. I know they will be delighted.”

  I slumped down on one of the blue sofas, and Andie squashed down onto the one across from me. If Mom were here, I imagined she would tell me my current posture was bad for my back.

  Socrates followed us into the room, Pettikin riding on his back. He lay down by the fireplace and gazed at me with adoring dog eyes. Pettikin slid down to the floor and leaned against the dog’s fur. Our eyes met briefly, but neither of us said anything.

  Andie picked up a book from the coffee table and began flipping through the pages.

  “I still have ten pre-calc problems I have to do before Monday,” she said.

  “I did them before the funeral. You can copy mine this once if you want.”

  “I’ll have to make sure to get one of them wrong, or Mrs. Greene will know I copied.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and stared out the window. The numbness I had been feeling was starting to wear off, and, in its place, waves of pain washed over me. It wasn’t physical pain but a kind of icky, emotional pain, like something deep inside me had been wounded. I tensed my jaw. More than anything, I wished I could be alone.

  In answer to that wish, Mrs. Widgit, Professor Theopolous, and Dad came into the living room, chatting and carrying their mugs of coffee. Professor Theopolous had his book tucked under his arm.

  “That was your Mother on the phone Allie,” Mrs. Widgit sat down next to me on the couch. I resisted the urge to scooch away from her. “It seems you two have been forgiven for being miscreants, and that Andie’s parents have said she can spend the night here again.”

  Dad eased himself down next to Andie while Professor Theopolous sat in the chair at Aunt May’s desk and resumed reading his book. Mrs. Widgit was blocking my view out the window, so I picked up a book from the coffee table and pretended to flip through it. Decorating Your Alpaca for Any Occasion.

  “So I imagine we should start preparing for Vala’s return,” Mrs. Widgit said lightly.

  Vala’s return? Please. I snorted and continued to flip absently through the book.

  If Mrs. Widgit noticed my interior monologue or exterior huffing she ignored it. “I imagine he will want to try again as soon as possible. There’s no time like the present after all.”

  Andie watched me but didn’t say anything. I flipped my pages a tad too fast now to fool anyone. Dad raised his eyebrows and blew the phrase, “Oh boy,” quietly across his coffee mug before taking a sip.

  “We still have plenty of time if you think about it,” Professor Theopolous commented from Aunt May’s desk. “Vala could even reopen the Gateway tomorrow if he wanted.”

  I flipped a page a little too violently and ripped it. Frustrated, I slammed the book shut. “And if he does, which one of you is going to take Pettikin through this time?”

  Wow, that sounded nasty. Pettikin stirred from his dog fur bed, but I avoided his gaze.

  Mrs. Widgit put her mug down on the coffee table. “It has to be you Allie, you know that.”

  “I don’t know that,” I was surprised at how angry I sounded. “I didn’t do anything special at all. The alpacas led the way through the dimensions, any one of you could have followed them. Or let them take Pettikin home alone for all I care. They seem to know a lot more about this stuff than I do!”

  “You agreed to take on this responsibility,” Professor Theopolous’ voice was stern.

  “Theo,” Dad growled a warning.

  Andie jumped to my defense. “You can’t make Allie go back again after what just happened. We’re not used to this. It’s not easy for us to do this stuff!”

  I shot her a wan smile of thanks.

  “And what about poor Pettikin?” Mrs. Widgit asked.

  “Viola!” Dad’s voice was sharper now as he set his mug down on the coffee table a little too roughly.

  Pettikin cringed and burrowed deeper into Socks’ fur.

  I threw my hands up in the air, exasperated. “I love Pettikin! I want to help Pettikin! But I don’t think I’m helping! I almost got us killed!” I was shouting now.

  Mrs. Widgit, Professor Theopolous, Andie, and Dad all started shouting at once. I clenched my jaw and blinked back tears of frustration and anger.<
br />
  “Everything OK here?” A softer, gentler voice.

  Vala. He was standing over by the window, arms folded across his chest, smiling at us. A soft, golden light swirled around him.

  Andie was on a roll. “No, Vala, it’s not OK! These psychos are trying to tell Allie she has to go back through the Gateway again after those bat things almost killed her!”

  “Now, we are not psychos.” Professor Theopolous stood up.

  Andie jumped up off the couch. “Oh yeah? I bet we could get Allie’s mom down here to run a few tests or something.”

  “OK, I’m not sure this conversation is useful at this point.” Mrs. Widgit stood up and placed herself physically between the two of them.

  Vala caught my eyes.

  “Want to go for a walk?”

  A beat. Then, “Sure.” I stood up.

  The others fell silent and stared at us as we walked out of the room.

  18

  Vala held the front door open for me and brushed his hand across my back as we stepped out of the cottage. I wrapped my arms around my stomach in an attempt to conceal what I was sure must be visible butterflies. The air was getting chilly again, so hopefully, he just thought I was cold.

  “Want to walk to my pond?”

  “OK.”

  He walked slowly, which made it easier for me to keep up with him. He had changed into a black hoodie, white T-Shirt, jeans and tennis shoes, his appearance every inch a normal seventeen-year-old boy, except for the soft glow he gave off. He seemed relaxed and happy and not at all upset about what had just happened.

  He really is handsome, I thought, and then remembered, horrified, that he could probably hear what I was thinking. Oh jeez, oh no! I turned my head away from him, trying to beam my thoughts in the opposite direction.

  He chuckled and moved a little closer to me so his arm brushed mine. My heart beat a little too quickly for just the exertion of walking.

  It took us about five minutes to reach the pond, and we still hadn’t said anything. Vala paused.

  “Rock or campsite?” he asked.

  “Uh.”

  “Campsite.” He started walking again.

  I wondered if all people were as decision-impaired around him as I was.

  I hesitated as we passed the big rock, then quickly dipped my right hand and foot in the water and put a palm print and foot print on it, feeling ridiculous. He stopped and waited for me without saying anything. I hurried to catch up with him, wiping my hand on my jeans, the cold water turning my knuckles red.

  When we reached the campsite, Vala sat down cross-legged on the ground and gestured for me to sit down next to him. I hesitated and then lowered myself to the ground, leaving a safe distance between us.

  “So,” he said, “Tell me everything!”

  Did he mean about what had happened in the dimensions? Didn’t he already know?

  “I’m not omniscient,” he said. “I can know many things in the universe, but I can’t know exactly what’s going on inside here…”

  He tapped my forehead with his forefinger.

  “…unless you tell me.”

  “I was under the impression that you could read my mind.”

  “I can feel what you’re feeling and know what you’re thinking to a certain extent. For example, I know you’re upset, but I don’t know exactly what’s upsetting you or why. I need you to tell me.”

  A million emotions swirled like a black cloud in my mind, but I couldn’t explain what I was feeling.

  “Did something happen in the dimensions that upset you?”

  The black cloud in my mind solidified into a funnel cloud of bats in a void. I shivered. Hadn’t he been there? Hadn’t he seen?

  He moved closer so his shoulder touched mine. “I need you to tell me.” He peered down at me, concerned.

  “I, well,” my throat felt dry. “Those...things. In that last dimension. Actually I don’t even know if it was a dimension. I don’t know how we ended up there, it wasn’t like the other dimensions it was just a dark void, and those…those bats…” I broke off.

  “Sslorcs. Yeah. They take some ugly forms in some of the dimensions.”

  “And they just kept coming, and there was nothing I could do, until the light…” I swallowed. Was that you? I put an icy hand up to my neck where I had felt the creatures around my throat. I was trembling.

  “But you’re OK now. They’re not here now.” Vala took my hand from my neck and rubbed it between both of his. I felt the terror of the bats draining away, and a soothing feeling pouring into me.

  “I guess that’s true,” I said, but my voice didn’t sound convinced.

  He stopped rubbing but kept my hand in his. “It’s a strange mistake I notice most people on Earth make. You experienced that moment, and it was real for that moment. But moments are transient—they come and go. We can label them as good moments or bad moments, but it doesn’t make them any more real. When something bad happens to you, you can carry it with you forever, or you can learn to let it go. You can realize it’s just something that happened to you—it isn’t who you are.”

  His earnest expression was almost too much for me to handle. I looked away. Was I as terrified of him as I was of the bats?

  He gave my hand a gentle shake. My charm bracelet slipped out from under my sleeve, and he held one of the charms between his fingers.

  “Where did you get this, Allie?”

  “I found it on Aunt May’s night stand. I thought it would be alright for me to wear it since she left everything she owned to me.”

  The stone flashed once. So it really could do that? I hadn’t imagined that before?

  “It’s a summoning stone,” Vala said. “It’s ancient magic. The stones themselves have been around since the time of the Ancients. It’s a very powerful talisman. It can help you in times of great need. It’s a tricky kind of magic though because you can’t control it. Even I can’t control it. It will do what it wants, bring to you what it believes a situation warrants and not necessarily what you might want or think you need.”

  He turned the stone over in his fingers.

  “So May had a summoning stone,” he mused.

  He closed his eyes. The stone glowed, a white light tinged with lavender, then faded.

  “I tuned it to you instead of May,” he said. “You can keep it.”

  He placed my hand back in my lap but remained with his shoulder touching mine. I fiddled with the stone on my bracelet.

  “OK, what else? It’s obviously not just the sslorcs that are upsetting you.”

  Why was I having such a hard time articulating my thoughts?

  “I’m upset,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, “because I failed. And I’ve never failed at anything before. And now, the one time it really mattered, I completely blew it. I failed Pettikin, I failed you…”

  “But you didn’t fail. What makes you think you did?”

  Was he crazy? “Um—keys? Gateways? Tests? Getting Pettikin home? I certainly didn’t succeed at any of that.”

  “Yet.”

  My mind went blank.

  He shrugged. “For me, success and failure are just two sides of the same coin. Mostly what you call success or failure is just you placing some arbitrary judgment on any given experience.” He leaned toward me. “If you can learn to just let experiences be, to just let them come and go without judging them as good or bad, right or wrong, then it will be easier for you to live, to do what you need to do, and allow others around you to live and do what they need to do. We all have some burden to carry, and we’re all just doing the best we can with it. Don’t judge yourself and others so harshly all the time.”

  I felt a bit ashamed, but the frustration I had been feeling was gone. I also felt a strange kind of gratitude toward him. He talked to me in a way that no one ever had before. Here he was, a Guardian of the Universe, and Professor Theopolous had basically told me I wasn’t worthy of him, but Vala talked to me like I was worthy, like he w
as interested in what I had to say, like I mattered to him as a person.

  Across the pond a frog chirped and disappeared into the water with a small splash, sending ripples in our direction.

  “So, what else? Did anything good happen while you were in the dimensions?”

  “Well…the knarren were pretty cute.”

  We both started laughing at that. He grinned at me, and I grinned back, a big, dorky grin, which seemed to make him happy.

  “So what were the keys I gave you, do you know?”

  I was about to say no, I didn’t know, but then I thought about it.

  “Willpower,” I said finally. “In the red dimension the key was willpower. That’s how I got us through.”

  “Good girl. And the blue dimension?”

  I looked away from him. “Love.”

  “The most powerful force in the universe and always underestimated,” he mused. “It’s bigger than you and me. It transcends everything—time, space, even ephemeral happiness. And the gold dimension?”

  I hesitated. “That one I’m not sure.”

  He tapped the center of my forehead. “So that’s the one we have to get right this time.”

  I felt a warm glow behind my eyes and felt suffused with peace and happiness. He was completely golden. Radiant. I smiled at him.

  He leaned toward me and put one hand under my chin. My heart was pounding.

  “Don’t you see? This is who you really are.” He bent his face toward mine.

  Wait, were Guardians allowed to do this?

  He closed his eyes. “You’re a beautiful person.”

  He kissed me gently, and everything dissolved in light.

  19

  When we got back to the cottage, Andie was spread out on the floor next to the fireplace doing homework while Pettikin slept, curled up against Socrates. Professor Theopolous and Mrs. Widgit were reading on the couches. Mrs. Widget had donned a pair of rhinestone encrusted reading glasses with giant, teardrop shaped lenses.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Allie!” Pettikin woke up, ran over, and hugged my leg.

  “Your father went up to the house to get something, Allie. How was your walk?” Mrs. Widgit peered up at me and Vala from over her glasses, a knowing expression on her face. “Crisis averted?”