by Chris Miller
“Uh…yeah…it’s okay, see? I covered it!” I said, feeling more than a little awkward talking to a creature I had never seen before. It cocked its puffy head to one side and watched me with nervous anticipation of my next move.
“So you don’t like light, huh?”
It shook its head and turned around to groom itself, tending to the singed hair that covered its body. From the looks of things, it had seen better days. Something had burned the little creature from head to toe, leaving patchy spots of missing fur all over its body. I began to wonder if it wasn’t the light itself.
“Light bad!” it said, as if reading my thoughts.
“Listen, I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I said, trying to sound as comforting as possible. “I had no idea the light was doing that.”
My response seemed to calm the little thing for the moment. The charred portions of its fur had already begun to miraculously heal and grow at a surprising rate. In no time at all it looked as if the creature had never been harmed.
“Wow, how did you do that?” I wondered.
The creature returned what looked like a smile and stood up on two feet, shaking the last edge of the shirt sleeve from its ear. Any reservations I had about the uninvited guest quickly vanished. All I could think about now was how charming it was. I reached down in hopes of petting the critter, but it scooted away and curled up into a perfect ball before I could touch it.
“Oh, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you—I just want to feel your fur,” I said gently, making a petting motion with my hand. It peeked out of its ball shape and trembled as I approached with a slower pace. When at last we touched, it relaxed and uncurled, cooing under the palm of my hand and leaning into each stroke I offered. Its fur was warm and soft, like the down of a bird.
“You’re so soft, what are you anyway?” I wondered.
“Yor,” it replied in a squeaky little voice.
“A yor, huh? I’ve never heard of a yor before; you must be from another realm,” I reasoned. “Maybe from Solandria?” I stopped petting the thing for a moment, and it fell over into the laundry again.
“Are you from Solandria?” I asked.
“Yors, yours!” the creature repeated, this time pointing at me with one of its oversized five-fingered hands.
“Mine? Are you saying you are mine?”
It nodded enthusiastically, “Yours!”
“Oh no…no, no, no. There is no way on earth that is happening. I can’t have pets.”
To my surprise, the creature made the most pitiful face and burst into tears, sobbing much louder than its size should permit.
“Whoa, wait a second. It’s not like I don’t want you…it’s just that I’m not allowed to have pets—at least not furry ones anyway. We had a bird once and Em has her fish, but Mom is allergic to animal hair and she’d freak if she found out I had a rodent in the house.”
The little thing seemed only slightly comforted at my explanation. He dried his eyes with one of my socks and blew his nose into it. “Me yours,” it insisted, “not Mom.”
“Listen, I really wish I could,” I admitted, trying to ignore the fact that my sock was now covered in fur ball slime. “It’s kind of nice to have someone from Solandria to keep me company. I don’t feel so…alone.”
No sooner had I said this than the creature scurried up my leg like a monkey and perched on my shoulder, rubbing against my cheek. With each brush of his soft fur I began to think harder about how I could manage to keep him. I had always wanted a real pet and this thing was way cooler than a dog or a cat.
“Then again, maybe if I had somewhere to hide you,” I thought aloud.
“Yes, me hide…no Mom see! Flee!” it said excitedly, disappearing in a puff of smoke.
“Hey where did you go?” I said, surprised at how quickly he had managed to disappear. In a matter of minutes he reappeared on my other shoulder.
“See? Flee!” he said with a smile and what looked like a bow.
I had to admit, it was pretty impressive.
“Awesome, this might actually work! If you stay out of sight when Mom’s around, she would never have to know! Then you could be…”
“Yours!” it cheered, nodding emphatically.
Just then I remembered the mess we had left upstairs.
“Oh man, we’ve got to clean up, or she’s bound to find out you’re here. Come on!”
Chapter 6
How to Keep a Secret
Scrambling up the basement stairs, I arrived to face an even bigger mess than I’d remembered. The place could easily have been considered a disaster zone.
“You sure did make a mess of things for such a little guy!”
“Hungry,” it replied, rubbing its tummy.
“Yeah, well hungry or not, if we don’t get this place cleaned in fifteen minutes, Emily or Mom could be home and your chances of staying here will disappear quicker than you can.”
I placed my new pet on the counter and set to work cleaning as quickly as possible—a task made more difficult with the lights off. There was no way to fix the shattered flour canister or couch cushions. I was going to have to think of something to cover up what really happened.
The little creature followed my every move, watching from his perch atop Emily’s aquarium in the living room as I finished stacking the DVDs and books into separate piles to put them back up on the shelves.
“I don’t know why I have to clean up your mess. You could help out, you know?”
“Hungry,” it said again.
“I’ll get you something to eat later; just hang in there. We’re almost out of time.”
Sure enough, just as I put the last of our DVDs back on the shelf, I heard Emily’s car pulling into the driveway.
“Okay little fellow, it’s time to hide!” I shouted.
“Mmph?” it said, with cheeks twice the size as normal. I then realized he was soaked.
“Hey, what’s that you have in your mouth?”
It shrugged its shoulders, pretending not to know.
“Spit it out now!” I demanded.
The creature didn’t budge. A car door slammed outside.
“Listen, spit out the fish now or I’m going to turn on the lights!”
At that he spewed Emily’s prize fish onto the floor in a puddle of slime. The fish flopped helplessly around as I fumbled to recover and return it to the tank, a little worse for the wear.
“Man, how am I going to explain that?” I asked, looking at the fish’s chomped up fins. There was no way it would survive the evening.
“Cat!” was the last thing the fur ball said before disappearing.
At that precise moment the front door jolted open and Emily came bouncing in, chatting away on her cell phone.
“I know…I can’t believe it either. He’s just like that Triss, totally unpredictable.”
From the side of the conversation I could hear, I knew it was Trista on the other end. They were probably talking about my crazy mop attack earlier today.
Within moments Emily spotted the couch and locked eyes with me, raising an eyebrow in shock at the scene.
“Hang on a second, Triss. I gotta call you back.Yeah, I will. Okay, later!” She snapped her flip-phone shut and gave me “the look.”
“What happened here?” she asked, pointing at the couch.
With no better excuse, I decided to go with what the creature had said.
“A cat…was in the house….when I got home.”
“A cat?” she folded her arms in disbelief.
“Yeah, a really ugly one, black and white…with a scar over one eye.” I cringed—worried the scar thing was a bit over the top. “I scared it away when I got home but it had already ruined the couch.”
“Seriously? Did you leave the door unlocked this morning?” she challenged, narrowing her
eyes as if examining me.
“No…no, I locked it!”
“Then how did it get in here?”
“Uh, the basement…I think. The window was open a crack.”
Emily softened a bit, swallowing the lie.
“Oh man, Mom is going to freak; you know how much she hates cats.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Was it just the couch?” she asked, examining the disemboweled cushions.
I shook my head and looked down at the floor. “No, it tried to eat one of your fish too.”
At this Emily’s face sank. For the first time she actually looked concerned and not confrontational. “What? Which one?” She hurried over to the tank to see for herself.
“The blue one—your favorite!” I said, somewhat glad I was actually pulling this off. “I put it back in the tank but he looks pretty bad.”
She whined about her fish for a moment more before noticing the shades were pulled shut.
“Ugh, it’s so depressing in here; why do you have the blinds shut anyway?” She headed to the first window and started to pull it open. Even though he was invisible, I worried the creature might still be affected by the bright light and jumped to stop her.
“No…don’t!” I yelled. She looked at me with one of those you-are-so-weird expressions. “Uh, I thought it might calm…the fish down,” I lied again.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, flapping the first shade wide open before moving to the next. “Fish love light.”
Surprisingly, there was no screaming. Apparently the light only hurt the little furry thing whenever it was visible. If that was the case, I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t just disappeared in the basement—it would have saved me the trouble of hearing it scream.
“I can’t believe it. You know what, I bet it’s those new neighbors, the Fentons. They have a bunch of strays over there, and I swear I’ve seen them lurking around our house too. I’m totally going to call animal control…right after I call Trista and tell her about it.”
Right in the middle of Emily’s rant, Mom burst in through the back door and she sounded stressed. “Agh! I’m going to need both of your help, quickly! A buyer just called during my commute home and asked to see our house tonight. They’ll be here in twenty minutes.” She was about to set her coat on the couch when she saw the cushions. “What happened?”
Emily jumped in first and began to relay my entire cat explanation—only with much more dramatics. Mom was clearly upset by all of this account, but cut Emily off. “Okay! Okay. I’m going to have to hear the rest later. Right now, we just need to get this place cleaned up!”
Mom quickly gave out the orders. She would deal with the downstairs. Emily was charged with straightening up the bathrooms. All I needed to do was make sure my room was less of an eyesore than it usually was.
Ever since Emily had come home, I had been nervous to know where exactly the little home-wrecker had disappeared to. Not comfortable with making a scene calling out for it, I opted instead to snag a bag of cheese puffs from the pantry. Shaking the bag loudly as I walked, I attempted to lure him out with bait. He wasn’t biting. Not until I stooped down to pick up my backpack from the foot of the entryway stairs did I notice a distinct trail of water drops leading up the steps.
By following his tracks, I discovered my little friend, resting comfortably in my room. The curtains were closed and he was digging through my drawers. The small lamp on my nightstand was turned to its dimmest setting, but he seemed to be okay with it.
“What are you doing?” I asked, looking at the growing pile of clothes being flung out of my dresser.
“Hungry!” the little thing said anxiously, chewing on a pair of my underwear.
“Yeah? Well, you can’t eat those,” I said, yanking them out of his mouth. “Here, try these…”
I emptied some of the cheese puffs onto the top of my desk. Like a trapeze artist, the big-eyed creature bounded off my dresser and across the bed to my desktop.
“Food?” it asked, poking the orange puffs with curiosity.
“Kind of—it’s junk food since I don’t have any pet food here yet. It should tide you over until I can get some real food tomorrow,” I offered.
The little critter took a test bite and then started munching away happily on the rest as I began cleaning up my room. A couple armloads of clothing stuffed behind the folding closet doors, a few items kicked under the bed behind the blanket’s edge and you wouldn’t recognize the place. Okay, I know it was more like “relocating” the mess, but the end result looked good.
All that remained was the disaster on my desk. I brushed a landslide of papers and junk off the surface, into my lower desk drawer, trying not to disturb my roommate’s dinner in the process. A soft light pulsed under one of the piles. Clearing the papers away, I unearthed the source—it was the Author’s Writ.
The gold embossed design on the cover of the aged, leather, hardbound book was alive with light. In and of itself the glowing didn’t surprise me; I was used to seeing the book come to life in this way each time I unlocked it. But, it had never reacted like this on its own before. No. Some other mystery was at work.
What did this mean? Could it be that the Author was trying to reach me? I held my breath.
Not even the abrupt ringing of the doorbell at that moment, or the swirl of commotion downstairs, announcing the buyer’s arrival could pull me away from answering this call. Abandoning my room-cleaning mission, I quickly dropped into a chair and rummaged through my top desk drawer for the key—the golden key that the Author’s son, Aviad, had given me months earlier at his mysterious bookstore. Curious to see what I was up to, my hungry little friend left his cheese puffs and hopped over onto my shoulder just as I pulled the key out.
Though it no longer hummed as it did in my first encounters, the key still gave a sharp tug as I set it into place in the lock. Gently, I twisted it and the faint glow on the book turned suddenly brilliant as the latch fell open.
With a tiny yelp, the light-averse creature retreated behind my back only to tentatively climb back up when the light safely faded away.
Opening to the first page, I held my breath as I watched with eager anticipation for words to appear. The effect on me never grew old, though they were the same words that always appeared at the beginning. I read them aloud for good measure:
Born into darkness,deceived by the Lie,
a door has been opened,
through which you must die.
The world you now know
will soon be no more.
Your fading is certain; your death will be sure.
They were grim words to those who read them for the first time, but they had become much more than words to me now. They were a constant reminder of my adventure to Solandria, of all that had happened. In a way they were part of my story, part of who I was, and for some reason I was grateful for them. Before I could turn the page, a new paragraph suddenly began to form below the first. A surge of wonder came over me as I read these new words for the first time:
The Way will guide you, the Truth set you free,
a new Life is written for those who believe.
Could it be true? I ran my fingers over the new ink that completed the passage and the Author’s mark that appeared below it. The three interlocking V’s in the mark were a symbol of hope and inspiration for the Codebearers.
“Via, Veritas, Vita,” I whispered in awe. “The way of truth and life.”
Eager to see if more new passages might have appeared elsewhere, I took up the book and began flipping through the pages with great expectation. As it so happened, the book did have more to reveal—not on its pages, but rather from them.
Something slipped out of the book and fell to the floor. My furry guest was the first to react as soon as the object fell out of the Writ. Scurrying to the floor, he
began poking curiously at a square carefully folded paper. I set the book down and retrieved the fallen piece before he could eat it. The tan paper felt thick and rough to the touch. How could I have missed this before?
Turning it over, I found a red wax seal holding it shut, the flattened lump pressed with a signet that mirrored the Author’s triple-V mark. Yet, it was the flowing script inked just below the seal that nearly caused my chest to explode: Hunter.
My fingers trembled with excitement as I slid one under the seal and broke open the message bearing my name. Part of the broken seal fell to the floor, much to the delight of my pet. He gathered the wax crumbs and shoved them in his mouth before I could object. He swallowed the wax and looked up with eager eyes, expecting me to give him more.
“You’re strange, you know that?” I said.
He made a funny sound and, sensing there were not going to be any more handouts, scooted back over to his collection of cheese puffs and began munching again.
I turned my attention to the letter. The creased paper reluctantly opened up to reveal its contents.
Blank. There was nothing inside.
Perplexed, I turned the letter over to check that I hadn’t missed something on the backside.
Who would bother to send a letter with nothing on it?
I laid it down on my desk and smoothed out the folds, looking for any clue. At my touch, a wisp of smoke rose up. Alarmed, I pulled my hand back and noticed a tiny scorched line had suddenly appeared on the page. The smoldering line evoked a faint ember from its center that began to spread the black mark outward. Afraid of losing my message and setting off the hall smoke detector, I quickly wet a finger and attempted to snuff it out.
Not only did the ember not go out, but thin flames leaped wildly up from it, propelled across the paper as if by an unfelt wind. I jumped to my feet, sending my chair to the floor and the furry critter scurrying for cover under the bed. Ribbons of flame instantly overran the paper. Just as quickly as they had charged to life, they retreated, reduced to flickering embers spread throughout the page. I gasped as I recognized the series of singed marks left in their wake. They were words!
