Map of the Passages: 3 (Enchanted Emporium)

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  “What is it?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  “It was my mother’s watch,” Aiby said. She wound its spring, checked that its only hand was lined up to the correct hour, and then placed it in my palm.

  “Will you promise that you aren’t playing a strange practical joke on me?” I asked. “Like shipping me off to Patagonia or summoning a White Rabbit?”

  “You can rest assured, and so can we,” Aiby said, nodding at her father. He was leaning on my brother and limping along behind us. “Dad and I were thinking that this Second Chance Watch could give you some extra protection.”

  “Protection from what?” I asked.

  Aiby gently closed my fingers around the watch. “Do you mind if we talk about this tomorrow?”

  I grumbled. We walked in silence for several minutes.

  When we arrived at the paved part of the coastal road, I blurted out, “You know what I can’t stand about all this magic business? The mysterious expressions. Things like, ‘You’ll know when the time is right. You’ll figure it out in the end. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’”

  Click-clack. I turned to look at the source of the sound and saw that Aiby was gone. My brother was holding his arm up to support someone who was no longer there. “What happened, Doug?” I asked.

  “Man, I have no idea,” Doug said. “Mr. Lily thanked me for helping him, clicked his heels together, and poof! They both disappeared.”

  The Good Night Heels, I realized.

  Doug made a face like he smelled sour milk. “The Lilys are so weird.”

  My brother and I continued toward the pub where the others had gone. He noticed the silver timepiece I was holding. “Where’d you get that?” he asked.

  “Aiby gave it to me before she disappeared,” I said.

  “Looks like it’s made of iron,” Doug said, one eyebrow raised.

  I examined it with my fingers. “Or silver.”

  “You’d better hide it before Dad sees it,” Doug said. “Otherwise he’ll think you brought it to keep away some ghost.”

  “What ghost?” I asked.

  My brother ignored my question and pushed open the door to the Greenlock. The clamor from the people inside hit us like a rolled-up newspaper to the face.

  My long-eared dog leapt into my arms. “Patches!” I exclaimed. Dad hadn’t let me bring him to the bonfire, so Patches had stayed at the pub with my mom the whole time. His nose was smudged with oats.

  “Did you have a good time, boy?” I asked.

  Patches whined softly. I checked to see who had gathered at the pub. More or less everyone in Applecross was there, it seemed. Michael had resumed his command post behind the bar. My mother was talking to Mrs. Bigelov from the deli. Mrs. Santangelo was arguing with the Dogberry sisters. In one corner, Meb was joking with a farmer whose name I didn’t remember. In the opposite corner, McBlack was sitting as stiffly as death itself.

  The tables were loaded with raw prawns, Beltane egg cakes, and bannock (oat bread that Patches had apparently sampled).

  Doug had joined Piper the fisherman and Seamus the TV antenna installer. They were talking about the stones we put around the fire when the blaze had begun to die down.

  “I saw my folks do it once. It protects the fire from ghosts,” Piper said with a lisp. “To your health!” he added, then raised a pint of beer and drank half of it in a single gulp.

  Seamus agreed with him. He polished off his own ale, then added, “The ghosts from the moor will try to steal some of the fire. But with all those stones there, they won’t be able to get to it.” He shivered.

  “So what?” Piper said.

  “They’ll get angry at one of us,” Seamus said.

  I looked at Doug for an explanation, but he just shrugged.

  Seamus glanced at me. “Tomorrow morning you should go back and see which stone they’ve moved.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Whoever placed that stone will be the first to die,” he said grimly. “Like old lady Cumai.”

  “Well that’s twisted,” I said.

  “But true!” Seamus said. “And that’s not all . . .”

  Seamus trailed off when a large hand came down on his shoulder. The voice of the Reverend roared in his ears. “Enough of this childishness!” he bellowed. “Hasn’t coming to church every Sunday done you any good, Seamus?”

  “Prospero, bringer of storm tidings!” Piper exclaimed. “Let Seamus speak — he’s getting to the best part!”

  “No, I am not going to let him speak,” the Reverend said. “It’s almost midnight, gentlemen. And it seems to me that we still have a few matters to discuss.” Seamus shrank beneath the Reverend’s heavy hand.

  Piper gulped down the rest of his beer and promised he’d tell me the story another time. As he moved away, he added, “Assuming there is a next time!”

  Midnight arrived. Many of the others left in a hurry, giving various excuses. Mr. Everett picked up his oilskin jacket and disappeared. Someone else laughed, talking loudly. I grabbed an oatmeal scone and left. I thought I heard Mr. Everett’s footsteps drawing away in the direction of the dock, but I must have been wrong since his house was in the opposite direction.

  I watched the dark contours of the islands, wondering who had lit the other fires that evening since the boats were all ashore on the beach. The sea was calm and the starlight reflected peacefully on the water. I heard an outboard motor in the distance and imagined that some fishermen were already going out to sea.

  I leaned back against the outer wall of the pub and thought about many different things, most of which involved Aiby. “That girl is going to drive me nuts,” I muttered, taking a bite of my scone.

  “Psst! Hey!” came a soft voice not more than ten steps away from me. “McPhee! Is that you?”

  I looked for the source of the whisper, but I only saw the shore, the beached boats, and the cars parked in front of the pub in a fishbone pattern.

  “I’m here! In the van!” came the soft voice again.

  I passed the rest of my scone to Patches and approached Barragh McBlack’s mud-covered van. The back of the van was empty except for a little birch sapling in a pot, held down by two crossed ropes.

  “Um, where in here?” I asked, looking around inside. I was sure that McBlack had already gone home, but apparently not, since the van was still there.

  “I’m the plant!” came a voice from the container. “Can you hear me?”

  I blinked a couple of times. I’d heard, but it didn’t make any sense. I leaned against the van, wondering what had been in that scone.

  The plant spoke again. “It’s me! Somerled!”

  I jumped. Somerled was McBlack’s daughter — a mysterious little girl with green skin. I had glimpsed her through the windows of Scary Villa when I’d climbed onto its roof to steal the Sherwood Compass.

  “Listen — whoever you are,” I muttered, thinking someone was playing a prank on me. “How about you just come out? Where are you hiding? Under the van?”

  “I’m in my dad’s attic at Scary Villa,” it replied.

  “Then how am I hearing your voice?” I asked.

  “It’s called Virdilingua, Finley McPhee,” the talking tree explained. “It’s the old art of speaking through the branches of trees, like the wind. One of two tricks I still know how to do!”

  “And the other trick?” I asked.

  “You’ll see the other trick tomorrow, Finley!” said the sapling. “I need to talk to you about Cumai. And I have to give you something very important before it’s too late!”

  “Wow,” I said. “It seems like everyone wants to talk to me tonight. It must be my lucky evening.”

  “I know,” the plant said.

  I frowned. “And how do you know that?” I asked.

  “Meet me at the Black Birch in Reginald Bay,�
� the sapling said. “Tomorrow at ten — on the dot!”

  It was a more manageable appointment than the morning meeting Aiby had suggested, but the fact remained that I had to be at Prospero’s at eight for work.

  I tried to reason with the sapling, but all I got in response was the dry rustling of branches and the command: “Tomorrow at ten, at the Black Birch!”

  “Wait!” I repeated. “Is it really you, Somerled? Did you really appear in the woods a hundred years ago?”

  “I strongly doubt that, kid,” interrupted the voice of the district policeman Bobby Thorne. He had just exited the pub and was getting ready to drive home in his car. He looked at the birch in the container in McBlack’s van, then at me. He snorted loudly. “I’m not what you’d call an expert, kid, but it seems unlikely that this sapling starting growing a century ago. It’s probably two years old, at the most.”

  We stood there in silence for a moment.

  “I’d better go home,” Bobby Thorne concluded, turning on his car lights. “And maybe you’d better go home, too.”

  The plastic seat cover crackled under his weight as he climbed in. Bobby Thorne grasped the steering wheel as if it were a life jacket. “The cakes were really great,” he said, looking straight ahead at no one in particular. “Really great. And the beer, too.” Then he drove off.

  What a weird night, I thought.

  A half hour later, we headed home. Dad drove. Patches slept, curled up between my feet. Mom remarked that old lady Cumai would have been glad to know that almost everyone had come to her funeral and that it had been a lovely idea to arrange the little afterparty. She claimed there was no reason to be so sad at funerals. I didn’t bother to argue.

  I could tell that Dad wasn’t sad, though he was serious and worried. He kept looking at the sea as if he were waiting for something terrible to happen.

  By time we parked in the front yard at the farm, it was one in the morning. I let Patches climb out. All of us headed straight for the house.

  “Too bad your friend Aiby didn’t stay,” Doug said as we opened the door.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I agreed to drop by and see her tomorrow,” Doug said.

  “Oh, really? What time are you going?” I asked.

  The door to the house closed behind us. Mom and Dad had stayed back in the front yard to talk.

  “At 11:00 or 11:30,” Doug said. He took off his shoes and sighed. “Maybe I can persuade her to go on a picnic in the boat afterward.”

  Patches sniffed the air. The fur rose on his back and he bared his teeth. I bent down. “What’s going on, Patches? What is it?”

  Patches growled toward the stairs that led to the bedrooms. “Is someone up there?” I whispered.

  Doug didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a poker from the fireplace and went up the stairs two at a time, Patches a few steps behind him. I did my best to act manly by picking up a broom and following him cautiously like a spy in the movies. Once we were upstairs, we quickly checked the hallway in both directions. The door to the bathroom was ajar but no one was inside.

  Patches growled louder and began to scratch at the door to my room.

  “He’s in there,” I said softly.

  Doug raised the poker. We drew closer and heard a strange noise come from behind the door. A sort of swishing sound followed by a rolling noise.

  I thought about what I’d hidden in the box under my bed. My collection! I thought.

  I heard my parents’ voices in the yard. “Doug,” I whispered, “Maybe we should get Dad.”

  In response, my brother slammed his shoulder into the door and burst inside. Patches followed, barking furiously. I raised my broom and yelled, “Attack!” or something equally stupid.

  Something leapt at me and I raised my arms to protect myself. I heard the crash of falling objects. In the dim light from the hallway, I saw a raven slamming against the glass of the half-open window.

  “Get out of here, you ugly beast! Go away!” Doug shouted, shaking the poker at it. Stunned, the raven flapped its wings, slipped through the window, and flew away. Doug stuck his head outside to make sure it was really gone. He jerked his head back inside and said, “It was just a raven.”

  “Ravens don’t fly at night,” I pointed out.

  “You’re wrong,” Doug said.

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “You are,” he said. “There are even more outside.”

  I shrugged. Doug rolled his eyes. Slowly, his face took on the look of someone dumbfounded. I followed his gaze and saw that the wall of my room was covered with dark scratches.

  “What the devil?” my brother murmured.

  I turned on the light. The message on the wall hadn’t been written in the common alphabet. It was the Enchanted Language, the forgotten magicians’ alphabet. The letters sparkled. I tried to read them, but they shifted and moved as if alive.

  Doug beat me to the punch and read the words aloud. “If you really want to play this game, find . . .” he trailed off. I don’t know how he’d managed to learn, but reading it was child’s play for him.

  “Find what?” I asked.

  Doug shrugged. “That’s all it says. What ‘game,’ bro? And who did this?”

  I looked around. My fake Stegosaurus bones, lens-shaped rocks, quail feathers, and all the items in my little collection of odd objects lay scattered on the floor. Doug opened the wardrobe and my clothes fell on top of him. Those dirty birds had gone through everything.

  “Askell!” I exclaimed, diving under my bed to retrieve the box where I kept my key to the Emporium.

  There were feathers everywhere under my bed. My box had been opened. As I retrieved it, my heart skipped a beat. It was empty. I lifted up the false bottom and let out a sigh of relief. The scorpion key was still there. I put it around my neck.

  “What’s going on, Finley?” Doug asked. “Who the heck is Askell?”

  “I’m not actually sure,” I answered. “But as soon as I find out, you’ll be the first to know.”

  We closed the door to my room before my parents came up, and then pretended everything was fine. Doug helped me clean up the mess and move the wardrobe to cover the writing on the wall.

  The mere idea of lying down in my bed made me feel sick to my stomach, so I fell asleep in Doug’s room instead. I sank into a sweaty sleep, swallowed up by dreams I couldn’t remember later.

  When I awoke, it was morning. Doug had already gone to work with my father. I went into the bathroom and stood there for a few moments, looking at my reflection in the mirror. So what will happen today? I wondered.

  It was already 7:30. I brushed my teeth, got dressed, and went downstairs without even opening the door to my room again.

  “Are you going to the Reverend’s, Finny?” my mom asked. The blood in my veins froze.

  Finny. It was a hideous nickname. Worse than Viper, even.

  “Come on, Ma,” I groaned. “I’m almost fourteen.”

  She smirked.

  I felt anxious for some reason, so I sat down and waited for my cup of coffee. Ever since I could remember, no matter what time I awoke, my mother was already there to make me breakfast. And I think that was the case for Doug and Dad, too, but I was never up early enough to find out.

  “You don’t always have to be here to make us breakfast,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Then who should do it?”

  I sat down at the table, letting her serve me. “I volunteer Doug.”

  Mom chuckled. “Maybe,” she said.

  As if on cue, my brother burst into the house, banging the front door. Then he tripped and nearly fell on his face.

  My mother and I laughed. “Maybe not,” she said.

  Doug eyed us warily but said nothing as he made his way upstairs.

  I ate a slice of apple cof
feecake, slipped another slice into my backpack, and tossed a third to Patches — making sure Mom didn’t notice. Then I headed out back to get my new bicycle, which had been a gift from Lily and Locan to replace the one I’d destroyed shortly before.

  I brushed off the invisible seat, slung my regular old backpack on my back, and pushed the bike into the yard.

  “Hey, bro!” Doug called as I was leaving. “Don’t do anything stupid, all right? And when you get back, you need to tell me what’s going on with the ravens, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, putting my feet on the pedals.

  My brother came down the porch steps and struck a pose like our mom does. “I mean it, Finny,” he said.

  “Don’t call me that!” I said.

  He tried to grab my ear, but I dodged him.

  “Don’t you dare get into trouble again,” Doug said. “Seriously, Finley. I’m your brother.”

  “You finally noticed,” I said with a smirk. “I was hoping you would.”

  Doug smirked back. “Listen, I know there are things we can’t talk about with our parents. Things they wouldn’t understand . . .”

  I bit my tongue to stop from saying that he probably wouldn’t understand most of what I’d seen, either.

  Doug continued. “But I want you to know I’m here. Whatever you’re going to chase after, I’m here. You can count on me.”

  Wow, I thought. If I heard this conversation on TV, I’d change the channel to avoid getting cavities. But to be honest, I kind of liked hearing it from my brother.

  I nodded. “Don’t tell anyone anything,” I said.

  “About what?” Doug asked.

  “Anything,” I repeated.

  Doug gave me a thumbs-up. I waved goodbye, ignoring the weird lump in my throat.

  I began pedaling. I didn’t know it yet, but the longest day of my life was just beginning.

  The air along Baelanch Ba, the coastal road, was crisp, clear, and dusted with salt. I pedaled to Reverend Prospero’s rectory at top speed. Patches trotted at my side, his tongue hanging out.

  To my surprise, the rectory was closed and the Reverend was gone. Only the choirmaster, Mr. McStay, and Miss Finla (his housekeeper) were there. After the death of old lady Cumai, Miss Finla was officially the oldest person in the village.