by Kaleb Nation
With that, Sewey was out the door. Bran dashed behind him but only managed to get outside just as Sewey leapt into the car and pulled off, without even giving him a second thought.
The car was halfway down the road when it stopped, switched gears, and started backward, stopping in front of the bank again.
"I guess he’s going to take me home after all," Bran muttered to himself, very much taken aback. Sewey rolled his window down and furiously waved at Bran to come.
"Here, Bran," Sewey said, shuffling around in his briefcase. "I need you to stick these on the front door of the bank."
Sewey picked something out from the papers and shoved it into his hand. Bran looked down and saw that it was a rectangular sticker, typed with words in bold lettering:
ABSOLUTELY
NO SOLICITORS
"Put it where everyone can see," Sewey said. "I want them to know the TBD’s strict policy on politics."
"Politics?" Bran said. "I’m wondering how banning the sale of items by peddlers will show anyone your political views."
"What, what?" Sewey said. "Oh, no, I’m afraid you’re dreadfully mistaken. A solicitor is someone who is pro-gnome. And we don’t allow them at all."
"It’s not a peddler?" Bran asked.
"No, it’s not. Not anymore, at least," Sewey said, shaking his head. "The mayor suggested we stick it on all doors of every business that’s properly anti-gnome. You do need to keep up to date with the changing definitions of things."
With that, Sewey pushed on the pedal, without even giving Bran a chance to get his feet out of the way. Bran shuffled backward quickly, just in time to hear Sewey shout:
"Go get sticking!"
And he was gone, leaving Bran in a cloud of dust. Bran looked down at the sticker in his hand and shook his head, pressing it onto the door of the bank as he went in.
"Now I’ve got to bike all the way home," he said, closing the door behind him.
"Wait a moment," Adi stopped him. "I’m off too. Do you want a ride home?"
Bran hesitated, but found he really was too tired to bike. And, any chance to talk with Adi in a place no one would hear them was certainly welcome. He nodded.
"My car is in the back, this way," she said, starting to clean up her desk.
Bran’s bike wouldn’t fit in her trunk, so luckily she had some cords to tie the lid down and just left the tire sticking out. Her car was navy blue and had leather seats, not schweezing even once as they pulled from the parking lot behind the bank.
They were silent for a while. The air was tense, and Bran kept trying to make himself say something, but every time he opened his mouth no words would come. It seemed that for days he had had so many questions he wanted to ask, but suddenly they were all gone.
"All right, Bran, I’ve got to get right to it," Adi began without warning. "I don’t know what to do with you." She glanced at him. "You and me: we’re both in a grave situation—a very grave situation."
It’s worse than even you know, Bran thought, mulling over what he had learned from Astara.
"But Bran…you’re different than the rest of us." Adi went on. "What you have could…" She looked back at the road and let out a deep breath. "It could really make things difficult."
"What do you mean?" Bran asked.
She started to say something but decided against it, and looked back to the road. He felt as if she were a wall, and she kept laying up more bricks to make herself stronger. There were so many questions in his mind, so many he didn’t know the answers to.
"And I hope you don’t hate me for this," Adi said, and she glanced at him. There was a deep sadness in her eyes, almost like she had been betrayed by him, when Bran had done nothing at all. They sat in stony silence for a long while, not saying a single word, but pages being written between them as she drove on.
"There’s the turn for Bolton Road," Bran said, seeing it coming close. He said it just as she passed it up. "You passed it…" he said, pointing back over the seat.
"We’re not going to Bolton Road," she said, and the tone of her voice caused fear to creep under his skin.
Chapter 19
The House on Hadnet Lane
There was nothing bran could do. He looked at Adi, but her face was set with determination. She turned onto another road, the sign reading Hadnet Lane.
"Where are you taking me?" he stammered.
She didn’t answer, and her silence seemed to press on him like a weight.
The car slowed about halfway down the street. The house they had come to was small and had a white stone front, with a miniature yard that was enclosed by a black metal fence. The gate on the front was against the sidewalk and had the number 108 twisted into the metal. All the houses on the street were pressed close together with similar fences and sequential numbers. It was a cozy street and unimposing, though to Bran it seemed ominous.
"Time to get out now," Adi said, taking her keys. "Just be quiet and come with me."
"What do you think you’re doing?" Bran demanded with anger.
She turned to him.
"I thought you were trying to help me," he said, feeling betrayed. Adi let a deep breath out, but she didn’t reach to grab hold of him, like he had expected. She just sat there, and her eyes became filled with sadness.
"Bran, if you want to leave, you can go right now," she said suddenly. "You can run off, forget everything that happened. You want to go to the police and get us thrown in jail? You can do that too. I can’t make you stay."
She looked deep into his eyes, and in them Bran saw the weight of thousands of secrets, all kept inside. He avoided her gaze.
"Go now, if you want," she said to him. "But if you want to come with me, and if you want to know the truth, and if you’ve got the will and the courage in you to make the right decision, then you make it; and whatever you choose, I won’t stop you."
In Adi’s voice, Bran did not hear anything of ill intent. He felt that she cared about what happened to him, and she was his friend. Slowly, he slid away from the door and back into his seat, and he looked out the front window, feeling bitter again. She reached and grasped his hand.
"I thought so," she said.
"Adi, I just don’t know what to do," he said, and her grip on his hand tightened. "I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, now that I know I’m a mage."
"Don’t ever be afraid to face the truth, Bran," Adi said, squeezing his hand. "If we can’t face the truth, then we’re living a lie."
"But what is going to happen to me?" he asked.
She met his gaze, but then looked away, as if there was something that she had wanted to say but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She squeezed his hand again, then let it go and stepped
out of the car. Bran followed her up to the house, the skies dark and cloudy from the approaching storm. Adi slipped a key into the lock, then reached for another and unlocked the second. Beyond, the house was dim, and Adi gestured for Bran to go in first. With a moment of hesitation, he passed her, and she locked the door behind them.
It was dark inside. The thick curtains and drapes over all the windows only allowed the faintest glow from the stormy grayness outside. Bran squinted and saw that he was in a long hallway with a light-colored stone floor, and that there was a sitting room to his left and another hallway to the right. It seemed much like any normal home, except that nearly every wall was lined with shelves, and every shelf filled with books. Shadows fell down the rows as Bran peered into the room, the titles too far away to read, though the spines of them tempting him to come take a look.
"The house is a bit too big, if you were to ask me," Adi broke the silence. "But more room for more books, that’s what I keep telling myself."
"You’ve practically got a whole library in here," Bran said, looking up and down the hallway as they passed. Even in there, the entire right wall had bookshelves built in, covered with novels and old papers and reference books.
"Well, you can’t exactly blame me," she
said with a small laugh. "Most Illians are that way by nature."
Bran looked up at her, though he bit his tongue to keep from saying anything. He had heard that word before: Illian. It had been in one of the volumes in the back of the bookstore. Bran didn’t know how Adi would react if she knew he had been there, so he kept quiet.
"I’ve lived here for a while," Adi went on. "When I came to Dunce to be a part of the Mages Underground, the Special Services and Operations Division of the Mages Council bought this house for me. They even let me pick it out, and a car too— any car I wanted, all paid for."
Bran was lagging behind and glanced at the other wall. It was covered with pictures in ornate frames, paintings unlike any he had ever seen. They were on canvas with colors that seemed so vibrant and glowing, they almost immediately made all other paintings he had ever seen appear dull and boring. They were of farmhouses and dirt roads and sunsets and all sorts of beautiful things that were so alive, he wanted to touch them. He had never seen any quite like them before.
"I’ve got to keep my records straight, though," Adi went on from ahead. "The house is paid for, but I’ve still got to work at the bank so no one gets suspicious."
She noticed that he wasn’t listening, and stopped and glanced at him.
"Oh, you’ve noticed the paintings," she said.
"They look so real," he replied.
She nodded. "That’s the best thing about gnome art. It seems to capture the best of everything."
"A gnome did this?" Bran asked, looking over his shoulder. She nodded again.
"You like drawing too, don’t you?"
"Well, it’s nothing like this," Bran replied, still looking at it. "Mine are just pencil sketches."
"It sure makes our paintings seem so harsh, doesn’t it?" Adi asked, sighing a bit. "Well, go on, you can touch it if you’d like."
At her prompting, Bran reached forward to touch the surface of one, a slowly moving stream next to a cottage with a wide, sweeping roof. However, the second that his fingertips touched the surface of the painting, they sunk into it, and suddenly something chilled the ends of his fingers. He drew back in fright, and little drops of liquid flew behind him like he had splashed wet paint.
"I’m sorry!" he said, shaking his hand. "I think I put a hole in it!"
It was then that he noticed that Adi was laughing.
"What’s funny?" he asked, baffled.
"No, Bran, I’m sorry," Adi said. "I should have warned you. Gnome art is different."
She touched the painting, and just as Bran’s had, her fingers sank in through the canvas as well, and from the stream in the picture a smooth trickle of water began to rush down Adi’s hand, dripping into a puddle on the floor.
"See?" she said, drawing back. "That’s the magic in it."
She slid her fingers into the grassy area, where they were dried. It left the grass in the painting matted and dewy, though nothing underneath the surface seemed to have moved.
"Well, come along," she said. "We’ve got a lot to do."
She turned and left Bran standing there, his eyes wide. He reached forward to feel the grass, and it felt just as if it was there before him. He curiously touched the bright sun in the picture, but immediately jerked his hand away, because it almost scalded his fingers.
All the walls going up the staircase and the balcony were filled with more pictures of oceans and forests and waterfalls, some so vivid and inviting that if Adi hadn’t been walking so fast, Bran might have spent hours touching them and feeling inside. Adi led him down a hall from the balcony, which was lined on both sides with more bookshelves. There was a small slap of thunder outside, and both of them glanced through the glass.
"Looks like rain is coming," Bran said, but Adi didn’t reply. She came to a door and pushed it open. It revealed a large and wide room with dark wood floors and a high ceiling with thick trim around the edges. There was a massive fireplace in the center of the opposite wall, and yet again, more stuffed bookshelves going all the way around. A gigantic chair was in front of the fireplace with its back to Bran, and there was a fire crackling beyond it and a soft lamp in the corner, though in this room the windows were uncovered and let in gray light.
"Go ahead and look through those books while I’m checking on things," Adi said. "And say hello if he wakes up: he might find you something interesting."
"Who’s he? " Bran asked, but Adi had already disappeared through a door on the side. Bran stood very still, and instantly the room seemed frighteningly empty. He leaned forward to look through the doorway Adi had passed through, but she was gone. There was a crash of thunder outside the windows. Bran took a deep breath, looking back to the bookshelves.
"Look through the books," Bran repeated. "He might find you something interesting."
Bran wondered who the he was and if he was even around. Bran looked through the room, but there wasn’t anyone else there. He shrugged. He would have preferred going back down the hall to look at the paintings, but he decided to follow Adi’s instructions. He started to read the titles on one of the shelves.
Most of them were novels, like Harriet Travels to Wumpidun by Tracey Titus or Mayonnaise Goes with Everything by Sylvia Splinindad. He even saw a couple of Rosie’s favorites by Christine Rocco—but, he noticed, absolutely none on magic.
He knew that Adi probably wouldn’t have kept them out in the open, though he was a bit let down that there wasn’t much interesting in that room to look at. He turned, and all of a sudden his eye caught something in the chair in front of the fireplace. It gave him a start. It appeared to be a pile of blankets spread out on the chair, covering something small and lumpy underneath. The blankets went up the thick back of the chair, like a small tent, and at the top, something pointed poked out by an inch.
It was very odd, to say the least, so Bran started to shift nervously in its direction. He thought it might be a cat or some other pet, hiding under the blankets, as he saw no feet poking out the bottom to signify there was a person there. As he got closer to it, though, something else across the room gave a loud thump, and immediately shifted his attention upward.
"Hello?" Bran whispered.
No one answered. Bran tried to get a better look in the direction he had heard the sound. At first, he saw nothing; then he saw a shadow move on the wall. Bran started and jumped backward. But no one was there.
"I can’t see you," Bran said. Still, the shadow moved, as if there was a tall, invisible person casting it, though the light was obviously not from the lamp or the window.
As Bran stared at it, he noticed that the feet of the shadow were not touching the floor, and in fact, the shadow seemed to be pointing to a huge nail tacked to the wall, where the shape of
its foot was, almost as if the nail was holding it there. It gestured furiously in the nail’s direction.
"You’re stuck?" Bran said, trying to make himself speak. The shadow nodded profusely. Bran gulped. The shadow moved its hands up to its head, as if running its hands through its hair.
"I see," Bran stammered. "You want me…to help you…take the nail off."
The shadow nodded. Bran looked over his shoulder, hoping Adi might appear. She was gone. There came a tapping noise as the shadow tried to get Bran’s attention by drumming the wall.
"All right then," Bran said, stepping forward hesitantly. Where his own shadow brushed with that of the one on the wall, instead of being dark, the part where they crossed went light. He was cautious nearing the shadow, unsure exactly of what he was doing. The hand pointed at the nail.
"I’ll get it," Bran said. The nail was sticking out considerably, but it wouldn’t budge.
"It’s stuck," Bran said.
The shadow pointed again. There was a hammer on one of the shelves, just out of its reach. Bran grabbed it, and started to bend the nail out.
"Funny how you’d get stuck here," Bran remarked, feeling a bit silly. The shadow nodded remorsefully. Bran bent the nail head, wiggling it out. "But then aga
in, it’s even stranger that—"
But before he could finish, the nail was loose. Suddenly, the shadow’s foot flew forward, launching the nail right at Bran’s face and kicking him to the floor with a crash.
"NO!" a shout exploded from next to Bran, but it was already too late. Quick as a flash, the shadow leapt through the air, dashing across the room toward the door.
"Catch him, quick!" the new voice screamed, and there was a flash of motion, so quick Bran hadn’t a chance to see it, and something leapt from where the blankets on the chair had been, jumping at the door and slamming it closed a second before the shadow reached it.
"Don’t just stand there! Stop the cotch!" the voice said. Bran leapt toward the shadow, but it scaled the ceiling, tripping over the blades of the ceiling fan. It fell, tumbling across the bookshelf and sending books crashing as it whizzed across the room again, toppling the chair.
"GRAB him!" the voice roared, and Bran jumped, falling on top of a shadowy foot just as it was about to reach the window. The shadow toppled over, knocking against the wall.
"The nail! The nail!" the voice said. Luckily, the nail had fallen right next to Bran, so while holding the struggling shadow down he got the nail and started to pound it furiously with the hammer. The shadow struggled but was already stuck to the floor.
"Oh, oh, almost got away, we were so close to our dooms," the voice next to Bran said, and he was breathing just as hard. Bran, finally realizing that there was someone else in the room, looked at who was next to him, and nearly jumped through the roof.
The thing that had been sitting covered under the blankets had not been a cat, but was in fact a man with a bushy white beard and scruffy clothes. However, he was not exactly a man, for he was only about two feet tall, and on the top of his head he wore a long, red, felt conical hat.
It was a gnome. He was a gnome.
Chapter 20
The Gnome in the Home
Bran gasped and Fell backward, pushing away from the little man; the gnome did the exact same, until they were staring at each other from across the room, each with wide eyes. Then, after staring at Bran for a second, the gnome crossed his arms angrily.
