Chapter 49
It was just as well that Sam was suspended. Each morning he visited Sarah, hoping she would wake up from the medicated mist that held her captive. And each afternoon he worked on building Zinnie’s house. It took him a lot longer than he thought it would. He had to feed several 2x4’s through the cast iron posts of Napper’s fence, then a load of bricks, a bag of concrete mix, and more tools than he ever could have imagined his dad owning.
It took an entire day just to get the corner 2x4’s to stand up straight. He secured them with several other diagonal planks, expecting to be torn apart by a pack of wolves at any second, but none came. Gabby lay near him as he worked—in the spot Sam was pretty sure had been a chair by the hearth.
On the second day, he begged his father to help.
“I can’t,” his father repeated. “If I come, they’ll find you.”
The third day, it poured cold, vicious rain. Which made Sam less worried about wolves. He finished reinforcing the walls.
That afternoon, when the rain had stopped, he bricked a tall, wide chimney that he was sure was not in any way up to any code ever in the universe, but he figured that once Zinnie was back, she could fix it.
When he was done, Sam turned to the stove and picked up the welder his shop teacher had let him borrow. How his dad had talked Mr. Waters into that, Sam had no idea. Hey, let’s lend the violent, suspended kid a fire-shooting gun. Some adults, Sam was learning, were either crazy morons or people who actually cared. Probably a little of both.
Sam spent the next several hours trying to mend the wounded stove. He wasn’t sure it did any good, but when he was done, he bricked around and in front of it, creating a simple, flat hearth.
Finally, he pulled out one of his mother’s old doilies that he’d found in the suitcase with his grandmother’s picture, and placed that at the center of the hearth. It was snowing outside in the darkness—sleety wet flakes that pounded on the tin roof and leaked into the corners in a way Zinnie surely wouldn’t have approved. But it was the best he could do in a few days. And—Sam thought with a bit of pride—it was better than any play house. Well, a little.
It’d been a couple weeks since Ella had dipped into her mother’s jewelry box, but today she wrote on small bits of paper, scribbling all the names of all the friends she had, and then at the end, she wrote on a last piece of paper, CONFUSED. She dropped it into the cacophony of paper slips before lifting the bottom section and sliding out the stack of her mother’s papers.
She didn’t thumb through them as had been her habit. She just plopped them open and began to read.
Once in the land of the high white sun, the years flew by—rising and falling in a steady rhythm that did not, could not, relent. All of the Originators had long passed, their mortal shells crumbling to dust after the manner of every creature under the high white sun. None were granted the near perpetual life the Changers had once known, and none were denied the glory and birth of children. Except two. These continued while everyone else passed on.
The Remainers spent their days in woods where ancient trees and babbling creeks would die and change before they did. Seas dried up, rivers moved course, mountains withered to hills. The Remainers still aged, but so slowly as to be nearly imperceptible to those who lived and died among them.
The Tea-drinker provided refuge in her woods. Any who wished to build and not destroy were welcome. While the Unthroned hid, ashamed of his fate, tortured by a life that would not end. He avoided all until eventually, mercifully, his legacy dimmed, mostly forgotten.
Both watched as their new world slipped by into centuries—evil and good traipsing before them in an ever reliable succession of years.
When Sam came back to school on Friday the emptiness of not seeing Sarah was everywhere he looked. Of course, everyone else thought she’d been hallucinating or making something up, but Sam knew that there had been a wolf at her door—Sam himself had shown it the way.
Do not go near the ones you love.
“Sam,” Mr. Witten was saying. “Sam.”
Sam looked up.
“May I speak to you in the hall please?”
Sam expected a lecture. He’d missed at least one paper during his suspension.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Witten said, “about your girlfriend.”
Sam wanted to say that Sarah wasn’t his girlfriend, that he was fine, that whatever. Instead he said, “There’s a hole. I can’t close it.”
“A hole,” Mr. Witten said, “is an opening that can lead someone through to somewhere else.”
Witten took off his bracelet, held it out to Sam. “I knew your mother when we were younger,” he said slowly. “And lately I’ve been worried about you. This is a little piece of our combined past. Maybe it will open up some doors for you.”
That was not what Sam had expected to hear. Sam felt like he should have been shocked, maybe even angry at this new piece of information, but nothing surprised him now.
He found that he was not interested in memories. Or secrets. They all hurt, every one, in their different ways. And at this point he hurt too much for a new scratch to register very much.
He looked at the bracelet. The copper piece on the silver band was a square the size of an SD card, only slightly thicker, with ornate circles engraved around a delicately scripted “N.” Whatever that stood for. Sam didn’t care.
He nodded roughly at his teacher and took the bracelet, his hand brushing against the copper piece, which had the grain and thickness of a small, square key.
The semester was almost over. Today Mr. Witten would be reading selections from several of the stories they’d discussed this semester. He started with Hansel and Gretel—pacing the room, opening the tale, his rich voice filling it up until you forgot about his small, portly body.
The class stared at Witten with more attention than they’d given him all year—realizing, it seemed, what it meant that their teacher was a world-renowned folklorist—a man who could spin a tale like golden threads until you forgot.
“Once,” Sam’s teacher began. “There lived a boy and a girl at the edge of a wood—a wood deep with secrets, dark with wolves.”
Chapter 50
Ella had not been at the farm for almost three weeks. It felt like an eternity. Thanksgiving had come and gone—a fancy, French restaurant being Vivi’s only form of celebration. Ella was grateful. The less tradition, the less reason to think about her mother. The same went for Vivi’s Christmas preparations, which mostly focused around the Festival of the Red Candle.
Ella had gone shopping with Vivi several times, and had a ballroom dance lesson twice a week. Plus, people kept inviting her to get together to see a movie or play tennis or to shop some more. Ella was getting to bed later and sleeping in as long as she could. One Saturday, she had actually slept in until nearly noon.
When she thought about it, it felt weird to be just like a normal kid with a cell phone and this season’s boots. She’d never been a normal kid—not as the poor kid of a single mom, not as the orphaned kid of a dead mom. But slowly, steadily, her life had started to tilt toward normal. Some days she felt guilty enjoying it—the fluffy comforter on her bed, the cash that sat like an invitation in her new purse, the phone, the country club, the everyday indulgences that were part of life with Vivi.
At first she’d struggled to sleep in the perfect silence of Vivi’s house, but now she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to go back to the lullaby of rat feet in the ceiling overhead. At first she’d struggled to accept Vivi’s money, but now she was coming to expect it. At first she’d pushed against the easiness of her new life. Now, apparently, she could sleep until noon and not look back. Well, almost.
Lately Ella had been thinking some things through, ready to make some changes to her new life. It was time to leave certain things behind, and make other things permanent.
That afternoon, Ella took the bus like she had on her first trip out to the farm. It seemed like years since she’d r
idden a bus to the farm. She could have gotten a ride from Lila or Nicole, but she didn’t want them to know what she did in her free time.
She wished she could have gotten a ride from Sarah—Sarah who’d liked her in spite of her weirdness, maybe even because of her weirdness. Sarah who’d liked her, Ella realized, because they were both trying to figure out who they were.
But Sarah wasn’t here. Ella didn’t care if Lila and Nicole said Sarah was on drugs, or Kate and Brandt said Sarah had gone off the deep end with the goth thing. Ella was pretty sure that neither was true. Sarah had definitely been the most sane of the three friends, despite her efforts not to be. So why was she the one gone, institutionalized? Ella tasted the ugly word, then pushed the thought away, staring out the window and thinking about what she would say when she got to the farm.
She had decided that today she would talk to Jones about adopting Loco. Even with her new friends and new clothes and new status as non-loser, she had missed the dogs. She figured if she could bring one home, that ache would subside. She hoped so anyway.
She hadn’t talked to Vivi yet about adopting a dog, but she was pretty sure it’d be fine. Loco was perfectly trained, and what was a dog compared to an iPhone or—come Christmas—an Audi. It seemed like if Vivi would agree to those other things, she would certainly agree to taking in a pet.
When Ella got to the stop, she wrapped her coat tight around her. December had come quietly, and now the temperatures were dropping into the twenties at night. When she stepped off the bus, it was nearly dark.
Ella thought she saw a black form in the woods—like one of the dogs, except that it was running on only three legs. Ella squinted into the corn fields to the side of the road. It couldn’t be Foxy. It was too big. A rustle of old corn husks, and the shadowy animal was gone.
Ella ran her fastest to the farm. When she got there, she was surprised to see Jones outside in the gathering darkness with a bunch of lights set up—the dogs sitting eagerly around, as though waiting for a party.
Inside the circle of light, Jones had placed a table with several tubes and jars and a propane torch on the side.
“Hello, Ella,” he said, putting on a pair of gloves. “Wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.”
Ella was staring at the table and couldn’t think of a response. She hadn’t really expected to be here.
Jones dumped out a bag of foreign, silver coins.
Ella found her voice. “What are you doing?”
The farmer smiled. “I’m making silver. Well, sort of. I bought these old Australian coins off of Ebay. They were cheap, but they’re fifty percent silver. I can refine them and reduce them down to almost pure silver. Then I can use them for whatever else I want to make.”
Jones fired up the torch. “Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
He placed the coins in an old jar. “First, you add a mix of nitric acid and water.” The liquid changed color, becoming a bluish-green, while an ugly yellow gas formed at the top of the glass and began to drift off.
Ella felt like she was watching a witch at work, but she couldn’t move or take her eyes off of it.
Jones stepped back for just a moment. “You have to be outside because the nitric acid releases dangerous fumes. The dogs can smell it—they always back off.”
And they did. Ella did too. As Ella watched, the coins seemed to melt away, leaving nothing but blue liquid behind. That didn’t seem to bother Jones. He added more water and then poured the liquid through a coffee filter into another jar.
“It’s…it’s gone,” Ella said. “The coins are gone.”
Jones just smiled and put a coiled copper wire into the blue liquid. “Watch,” he said.
Ella found that she couldn’t not watch. Gradually, the copper wire began to attract what appeared to be dust-like specks of gray. As it did, the copper wire itself grew smaller and smaller. Soon the wire was almost gone and a strange clump of gray matter was left in its place.
The farmer looked at her, waiting for her to ask the question.
She just shook her head.
“The copper atoms traded place with the dissolved silver—so the silver solidified from the liquid as the copper went into the liquid. An interesting exchange.”
Jones poured the blue liquid and gray dust through another coffee filter, catching all the gray particles. When the particles were dry, Jones got out the blow torch.
Ella took a step back, though all the dogs seemed to lean in. Jones put some of the gray particles on—of all things—half a potato, which he set on a large brick slab. “The metal won’t bind to the potato like it would a brick,” he said. Then he turned the blow torch toward the particles. As the potato blackened, the gray particles began to come together. Jones added more gray particles until they’d all been heated and there, on the blackened potato, sat a tiny, shiny button of silver.
Jones stood back to admire it. “That there,” he said, “is nearly pure silver—99.9%. Pretty huh?” He stepped closer and touched it quickly to see if it had cooled. When it had, he held it up in the light.
It was pretty—one of the prettiest little stones Ella had ever seen. But she stepped back anyway because when the farmer held the small piece of silver up to the light, it looked exactly like a small bullet for a small gun. She tried to shake off a shudder, but didn’t succeed.
Jones looked at her. “You cold?” he asked. “Come on inside for a cup of hot chocolate.”
“No,” Ella said. “No, thank you. I actually can’t stay long. I just came because I needed to tell you that I won’t be able to come out to the farm much anymore. Maybe not at all. It’s just been really busy with the end of the school semester and Christmas coming.”
“And the Festival,” Jones added.
“Yes,” Ella said, not sure why she was surprised that he knew about it. “And the Festival.” She took a quick breath. “But Mr. Jones,” she said. “I also wanted to talk to you about adopting Loco.”
Jones paused for what seemed like a very long moment. “Of course,” he finally said. “Now, I have to tell you I don’t actually do the adoptions. Miss Mandy at the Humane Society will have to take care of that side of the business. I’ll give her a call and maybe we can shoot for this Tuesday. How does that sound?”
Ella didn’t know. She hadn’t even discussed it with Vivi. “Okay,” Ella said. “That will probably work.”
Jones stared thoughtfully toward one of the lanterns and as he did, Ella noticed that he wiggled something in his mouth. She watched as he moved it up and down, almost as though it was a mouthpiece of some sort. Jones turned quickly and saw her staring at him.
“I was just thinking,” he said, and as he said it he seemed to click a few of his teeth back into place, “that I’m going to miss that old dog. He’ll be in good hands though.” Jones winked.
Ella barely registered it. She was staring at his mouth.
“Sorry,” Jones said. “Bad habit. Cow kicked two of my teeth out when I was a kid. That’s why I only raise corn and chickens.”
Ella nodded, but could not find it in herself to smile. She’d just seen Jones fashion old coins into tiny silver nuggets that looked like bullets. And he was missing teeth.
It seemed impossible—surely she hadn’t spent the last few months doing volunteer work for a serial killer. He took care of dogs. He ran a corn maze. Ella paused. A corn maze with a famous silver bullet.
“I, um, I’ve got to hurry to catch the bus.”
“Do you want me to walk you there?” he asked. “You look a little ill.”
“No,” she said. “It’s okay. The cold air feels good.” Ella turned up the gravel drive, walking quickly, then trotting, before breaking into a full run. She didn’t slow until the bus rumbled down the country road, pulling to a creaky stop in front of her.
Ella let the bus go past her stop—well past. The thought of going home to Vivi’s perfect house seemed hard.
When she got off the bus, she realized she’d gone dow
n into the southern quarter of town. It was now nearly eight o’clock, and she was standing in front of a building of old, run-down apartments with a “For Rent—Cheap” sign in front of them. This is where her mother would have lived if she’d ever lived in Napper. The only gates in her community would have been on the apartment windows—and that was if she was lucky. One bedroom, one bath, mice optional.
Ella walked all around the building, smelling booze and Mexican food and old, empty room smells that seemed to drip from the walls.
The buses had stopped running. It was probably a good three miles from here to her house, and Ella felt suddenly very, very tired. Sam’s trailer park, she knew, was just a few blocks away.
By the time she got to his house, it was really cold. Sam looked thin and pale when he opened the door.
“Ella,” he said, letting her in quickly. He had just come back to school and she’d been avoiding him. “What’s up?”
Ella took a deep breath. “I went to the farm,” she said, “but I missed my stop. I must have fallen asleep. Do you think your dad could give me a ride to Vivi’s house?”
Sam’s dad had come up behind him, and Ella was pretty sure that his dad looked like the very last thing he’d like to do in this world is give her a ride home, but he dug his keys out of his pocket anyway.
“Yeah, sure,” Sam said, getting his coat. The three of them walked out to the old van.
It wasn’t a long ride, but it was surprisingly quiet.
Ella noticed that Sam was staring at her in a strange way—kind of like he had when they first met, only even stranger, like he wanted to tell her something.
She sighed. Sam was definitely a weird one. She hoped no one would see her get out of the van. She wasn’t sure how she’d explain that to her friends. She turned away toward the window and Sam looked down at Ella’s hand, staring at her ring.
“So,” Sam’s dad finally said, breaking the silence. “You live with your aunt. This is your dad’s sister?”
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