by Kaleb Nation
He rolled over and caught the bird with the back of his hand, sending it under a table. He leapt to his feet, and the bird fluttered about, shooting toward him again. Bran held his hands up to block his face, and the raven slammed into his arm, scratching at him with his claws and screaming into his ear. Bran swung his fist into the bird once more. It fell again and was still.
Bran gasped for breath and held the side of his arm, looking at the raven; and it was then that he realized that the entire tavern had gone completely silent. Slowly, he looked up, and saw that everyone was staring at him with wide eyes. The waitress was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, her face filled with shock.
"Th-the bird, it dove at my face," Bran said, shakily pointing down toward its body on the floor. The waitress looked where he was pointing.
"What bird?" she asked, disbelievingly.
"The bird, right there," Bran said, looking back to where it was laying. Then he stopped. It was gone. The raven had disappeared into nothing, as if it had never been there at all.
"No, really," Bran said, looking back up at her quickly. "It attacked me!"
The men at the tables slowly turned back to their conversations. The waitress shook her head.
"A raven of all things, in the Flob Hopkin’s!" she hissed. "Should take a strap to you!"
Bran blinked and he looked back under the table, where the bird’s body had been.
"But I’m sure it was there…" Bran insisted, and he reached up to wipe the blood from his arm. His fingers stopped, and he looked at his arm.
"The cut…" he said with disbelief. The gash that had been on his arm had completely disappeared as well, as if it had never been there at all.
"It’s gone!" he whispered, not believing what his own eyes told him. There wasn’t even a trace of blood on his fingers. It was as if he had imagined everything that had happened.
"But it did," Bran told himself. He could only shake his head, as not even he could see any evidence of the bird. He began to turn around back to the table, when all of a sudden a shadow fell over him, and he was face to face with Joris.
Chapter 15
The Name on the Necklace
Bran gasped and stepped backward. Joris didn’t move. "What’s a boy doing at a place like this?" he said, his words like fire. "I-I’m here with somebody," Bran stammered, unable to break his gaze.
"Oh?" Joris said with disbelief. He lifted his hand, and Bran almost jumped. "Here," Bran heard him say, and he reached out with something. "I think you dropped this."
Joris held out his hand, and in it was the envelope from Astara.
Bran hesitated, but slowly reached forward to take it from Joris.
"Thank you," Bran said slowly, and Joris watched his movements, almost as if he could recognize something. Then, his gaze lifted up, scanning the room once, before shifting back. "Harley, Larry," the man finally said. "I’ll talk to both of you tomorrow."
His eyes did not leave Bran’s as he spoke, until he stepped forward and passed Bran for the door. Bran was still and felt the man’s shadow as he passed. The two men who had been with him rose unsteadily from the booth, mumbling among themselves, and Bran hid his face as they passed, though they were too drunk to notice him anyway.
"Joris." He said the name to himself. He tightened his hand around the envelope, remembering the way he had looked at him. It was as if Joris had recognized him as the boy he was looking for: but for some reason, he had done nothing.
Bran turned to look at the table where the men had been sitting, and suddenly, his eyes locked on something out of place. It was on the edge, sitting alone, softly reflecting the light of the lamp: Joris’s silver cell phone. Bran froze when he saw it. Joris had forgotten it on the table.
That’ll have the answers I need, Bran thought instantly. He hesitated: what if someone saw him, or Joris came back looking for it? He didn’t want to be seen touching the phone, but on second thought, it might hold the only clues he could work with to find out who this man was. He checked the door: Joris was gone. Quickly, Bran stepped to the table, sweeping his hand across and sliding the phone out of view, slipping it into his pocket before anyone could see.
"Don’t ring," he hissed, his fingers clutching it so tightly his palms became hot against the metal. He felt in an instant that everyone in the tavern could see it burning through his pocket, telling the world that he had it, and he knew he couldn’t even take a glance at it until he got home for fear someone might see. His heart beat quicker as he realized what he had done.
All of a sudden, he heard loud shoes coming up behind him, and some things crashing in the kitchen. He spun around, and there was Sewey, his slippers flopping on the floor, and over his clothes was a white apron, as if he worked at the tavern.
"Forget the blasted drinks!" he said, tearing the apron off. "We’re leaving!"
He tossed the apron into the booth, grabbed Bran’s arm, and started to pull him to the door.
"Stop gawking like that," Sewey ordered. "What a waste of time this whole trip was! I wish you never would have suggested the pub in the first place!"
Sewey pushed through the doors. As Bran stepped out, he glanced down the street to make sure the man wasn’t watching for him. What he saw almost made him stop: a black van, driving toward the end of the road, the same as had followed them on Sunday, and the same as had been sitting at the end of Bolton Road the day before.
Bran’s eyes didn’t leave its form, even as it reached the corner. His grip on the cell phone tightened as he watched the van disappear down the street.
When Sewey and Bran got home, everyone else was asleep. Bran started up the stairs, and when he got up to his room he didn’t dare turn on a light for fear that Sewey would see it and get suspicious. He moved for his bed and drew the cell phone out of his pocket. It took hold of the moonlight from his window and reflected it like a mirror, the surface polished and smooth, now showing fingerprints from where Bran had been gripping it.
"Let’s see what you can tell me," he whispered to it, lying back on his bed. He held it in front of his eyes, all the while feeling his heartbeat beginning to quicken. It felt strange to be holding something that not half an hour before had been in the hands of a man who was hunting him.
He flipped it open. The inside was arranged like most phones, with shiny black buttons like glass and a color screen playing light across Bran’s face. It seemed to be a sleek and expensive model, every detail sharp and crisp, and the front screen showed the time and date. Bran pressed a button at the top of the keypad and pulled up the menu. There was a list of options on the screen, and he began to navigate through them, down to one labeled Recent Calls.
I wonder who’s been calling Joris, he thought, selecting it. A list of numbers popped up, going down the screen. Bran looked at the top: it was marked in large letters PRIVATE NUMBER, and next to it was the date from the day before. Bran scrolled to the next one, and it read the same, but dated one day earlier. Bran continued to scroll down, but each call Joris had received seemed to be from the same person, calling almost every evening at the same time.
This is odd, Bran thought, but as he scrolled, the name changed. There was a different record on the screen, labeled simply with a single letter: T. The letter was all alone, as if a name should have followed it, but there was nothing next to it but a date, April ninth.
Two days before we heard Shambles at the door, Bran thought. It struck him as very odd. He paused, his fingers poised over the buttons, and finally navigated the phone back to the main screen and tried for the address book. He clicked it, but suddenly, before it showed the records, a red screen popped up: ENTER PASSWORD.
"No," Bran hissed. He punched in J-O-R-I-S, but of course he wasn’t stupid enough just to use his name. Bran tried
S-H-A-M-B-L-E-S, and even H-A-M-B-R-I-C, but none of them even made the red screen waver. He punched all the keys at once out of frustration.
"And I was just getting somewhere," he said. He had risked so much for that
phone, and now it hardly gave him anything in return. Bran found the volume and turned the ringer to vibrate; he certainly couldn’t answer it. If Joris knew he had it, he’d come for Bran in an instant to get it back. As long as he didn’t know where it was, it might deter his plans just a little.
Bran felt there wasn’t much more to be done with the phone, and so he started to change clothes. He folded up his jeans out of sheer habit, and wasn’t even thinking as he went through the motions of getting ready for bed again. His mind was on other things and bitter at having been let down with the cell phone. He began to set his jeans into the drawer when something fell out of the pocket: the envelope Astara had given him, and the paper she had written on. The envelope slid across the floor and under his bed, and at the sudden sound Bran froze. In getting wrapped up in the cell phone, he had completely forgotten about Astara.
For a moment, he stared across the room at the envelope. He looked down at the paper at his feet. He hadn’t believed her enough to read what was on it. Now he wasn’t so sure of himself. Very slowly, he bent down for the paper, and he read what was written there:
Helter Lane and Jackston Road
Go down the path.
—Astara
"More directions," Bran said with slight disappointment. He had at least expected something more—now she was just sending him somewhere else for the answers. He slowly came to his bed and slid his hand under for the envelope.
Best not get my hopes up, he thought. But already his senses were jarred by what he had heard at the tavern. Suddenly, he felt as if his mind was beginning to listen to the words Astara had said, though he fought hard against them. He sat on his bed slowly so it wouldn’t creak and reached for the edge of the envelope to tear it open. It was taped shut and had dirt under the edges.
He heard a noise across the room. His hand froze over the edge, his gaze looking up.
All was still. His eyes shifted to the other corner. Nothing. A strange, eerie feeling began to creep up, but he brushed it away and looked back to the envelope, reaching to tear the edge.
There was another sudden sound, on the other side, and Bran jerked his head up again. A small shoebox fell off the top of a stack and hit the floor: a small sound, but it made him jump.
"Who’s there?" he said quickly. He sat frozen on his bed, listening for any movement, any voice that might come from the darkness. His eye caught a movement, in the mirror leaning against the wall, like someone rushing past. He turned his head, but all was still again.
He watched for a minute, but then looked back to the envelope and ripped the end of it quickly, glancing up again but seeing no one. The light from the moon streamed in from the window as he pulled the paper apart and turned it over, dumping its contents into his hand.
Something metal touched his palm. It was small, and as he held it up close to his face, he saw that it was a silver, moon-shaped pendant on a thick black string.
He turned it over—so smooth and polished that it seemed a silvery white. It was curved exquisitely and reflected his face on the smooth side, the points sharp. It seemed so perfect he could almost feel power radiating from beneath its surface, like he was holding something terrible and great at the same time; he could almost feel something moving inside and rushing to break free, but held tight within its silvery shell. Only his mind could perceive it, and even then it was very faint. All he could do was stare in wonderment.
What is this? he asked himself, turning it over in his hand. He turned back to the envelope and saw a slip of paper stuck at the bottom. He drew it out and read:
Your mother told me to give this to you, and wanted you to wear it.
—Astara
Bran blinked at the paper. His mother? He reminded himself not to believe anything from Astara. But instantly, his heartbeat quickened, and he looked back to the necklace. He was very mystified, and slid his fingers over its surface. How could this girl have possibly gotten something from his mother—the same mother he had never met?
It can’t be true, he thought. Still, he felt around the edges of the string again, lifting it up to his eyes. Then he noticed something: there appeared to be light blue markings underneath the glassy surface of one side, though they were dark and he could not make out what they said. He lifted it into the moonlight to see better, and as he did, something happened.
The blue markings suddenly flashed forward in white, blinding Bran with their light for a moment and then fading the next second so he could see again. It happened so fast that he didn’t have a chance to react; and then, as his vision cleared, he saw that the glow had settled into the surface of the necklace like white drops of light, moving in thin lines across the necklace’s surface and filling the blue markings like water into tiny cracks. He could not move his hands, his gaze riveted on the motion of the lines, his breath quickening as he saw them fill the shapes along the bottom curve, forming letters which spelled the name Hambric.
He moved his hand to cover it quickly, looking up toward the ladder in case someone had seen the light; and when he heard no one coming, he slowly slid his hand away from the necklace, and saw that the glow had disappeared, leaving behind only the faint blue letters nearly invisible in the dark… though still spelling his last name.
"It’s the moonlight," he realized, lifting it again toward the window. The instant the beam struck it, the letters flashed again like thin white fire, and when he saw them, he pulled it back into the darkness, and the words faded once more.
"Where did she get this?" he wondered with amazement. He was sure it was magic. He looked back to the paper—his mother wanted him to have it?
He pulled the necklace up by the string. It was something very strange to him, and he almost found himself wanting to believe what Astara had said. But how could his mother have given her something to give to him? But as he read what Astara had written, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to do what she said, so he lifted it up, and put it on.
The moment he did, it was as if the world around him exploded at once.
Instantly, there was a burst of white light that hit him full force, electrifying and washing through every nerve he had. Bran fell, losing control of his muscles, and the moment his hands touched the ground, he was somewhere else.
It was a cold, white room bathed in light, everything around him blurred as if there were a sun ray in his eyes. The walls were empty, the room was blank, and in the middle of the space was a bed which rose out of the floor—and it held a body.
The body was white and deathly, shrouded in black robes… motionless. Bran recognized the face, even in the suddenness of seeing it—the same man from his dream! His eyes were closed, hands by his side, but then, the body gave a jerk, as if a tremor had been felt.
There was a sharp intake of breath, choking once for air. In a flash, the eyes of the body flew open, staring toward the ceiling in terror and pain; and then, the next second, the body fell again, and Bran felt his back hit the floor. And in that same second, he was back on Bolton Road again, and he heard the necklace clatter to the floor beside him.
Chapter 16
A Path in the Woods
Pass the sausages, rosie," Sewey said at the breakfast table later that morning, gobbling down heaps of food. He gave Bran a curious glance, waving his hands in front of Bran’s blank eyes.
"Well, what’s the matter with you now? " Sewey demanded. "You’ve hardly touched your food. Don’t tell me it’s that burglary last night!"
"N-nothing," Bran stammered. He grabbed his fork and tried to eat some sausage. Even that didn’t taste good. The cell phone was hidden in his room, but he could feel the necklace in his pocket, constantly reminding him of the name that was on it— of the girl, the magic, the creature…and the man he had seen the night before. But mostly what he thought about were the directions Astara had given him on the paper. Now he knew he had to follow them.
Sewey shrugged and absently reached for the pile of bills beside him, accidentally knocking it over. It so
unded like a miniature avalanche.
"There’s my day book!" he said, spying the black leather book that had been underneath. "Ah yes, nothing important today, and nothing important…"
He squinted. "Well, there’s something tomorrow, but I can’t tell what it is. Someone scribbled in my book."
He crossed his arms at Bran. "And who here likes to make ridiculous markings on paper?"
"That’s just your handwriting," Bran said, pointing. "It says Formal Dinner Night."
"What?" Sewey said, bewildered. "Formal Dinner Night? Is that code?"
"Fool," Mabel snapped at him. "It means we clean the house and dress up for dinner."
"For whatever reason?" Sewey squealed.
"It’s the healthiest thing," she protested. "The Fitness Witness told me so!"
"Bah!" Sewey waved his hand. "I’ll have no part in formal dinner whatevers!"
He started to strike it out, but Mabel slapped his hand with the business end of a fork.
"Youch!" Sewey cried. Formal Dinner Night stayed.
Sewey left for work, and Bran left to start on the dishes, his mind elsewhere. Not long afterward, Rosie came into the kitchen and started to put a hat on in the reflection of the mirror. She was dressed up more than normal.
"Where are you off to?" Bran asked, setting a few dishes back in the cabinet.
"To the market," she replied, putting a small daisy in her hat. She dropped her voice. "I’m also stopping by the newspaper to drop off a new article!"
"That’s wonderful!" Bran said. "Maybe it’ll make it this time."
She looked happy, but then something passed over her face, some thought she didn’t like. She stood there for a moment, watching him do the dishes, and finally sighed and moved for the sink.
"Come on, move aside and let me wash!" she commanded, rolling up her sleeves. "I was born a dishwasher like every other Tuttle, and I can’t sit and watch someone else do it without me!"
