by Obert Skye
“Just don’t fall asleep,” she replied. “It’s going to be a long drive.”
“How wide is this ocean?” Clover asked.
“About twice the size of the Lime Sea,” Geth answered.
“Wow,” Clover said. He turned to Leven. “We really are going to run out of gas, Dog.”
“Dog?” Leven said.
“No good?” Clover asked, referring to the nickname. “I heard someone on the radio use it. I thought it sounded important.”
“Keep trying,” Leven smiled.
Clover disappeared, and Leven sped like the wind farther across the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Closer
Sabine had to stoop to get through the crooked, old doorway. As he stepped into the ancient house, a handful of his shadows swooped in after him. It was the home of Amelia Thumps, the woman Hector Thumps had married after he returned to Foo. She was also the mother of Leven’s father, whom Antsel had returned to reality shortly after Hector’s death.
Amelia had been a beautiful woman in her youth, a somewhat attractive woman as an adult, and almost an eyesore as an old woman. Her hair was thin and scraggily, and the tip of her lumpy nose had for some years drooped down over her top lip. She wore thick glasses that made her eyes look huge. She was one hundred and fifty-three years old, and she planned to live at least three hundred more. People often wondered what she would look like then.
Sabine had come to visit her, hoping he might extract from her some bit of information regarding the location of the gateway. She had been questioned many times before, but Sabine had the feeling she might be withholding something she knew. The dream he had intercepted and manipulated earlier had given him reason to visit this house again.
Amelia offered Sabine a seat but he declined to sit, choosing instead to pace as she sat uneasily on a worn velvet couch.
“How nice of you to meet with me,” Sabine said, affecting a civility that was not natural to him.
“I don’t see that I had any choice,” she complained. “Your shadows kept at me until I gave in.” Amelia tried to keep her voice even. She had a lot to hide.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, trying to keep from becoming angry. “Their manners are not always the best.”
“You cast them,” she smiled rudely. “Now what do you want? I’m meeting friends in a short while to make splotch.”
“I won’t keep you but a moment,” Sabine began. “I was wondering if you would mind answering a few more questions about Hector’s gateway.”
“Ha,” she laughed. “There is nothing else to say. I’ve told you everything I know,” she said. “Now leave.”
“In a moment,” Sabine snapped. “Perhaps there is something you forgot to tell me,” he coaxed.
“I don’t know where the gateway is,” she lied. “I wish it had never existed. I wish he had never returned and that I had never fallen in love with him. He was trouble from the start. It took me losing my son to know that.”
“Yes, your son.”
“Hector couldn’t bear to think his son would grow up here, never knowing life outside. Antsel snatched the baby from me after Hector’s death. I should have never let him take him. At the time I didn’t want the reminder. I know now I was wrong.”
“Of course.” Sabine tried to sound compassionate. “But certainly Hector spoke of the gateway.”
“That’s all he did,” she said irritably, knowing she wasn’t admitting anything that most in Foo didn’t already know. “He was mad. He thought he had created the greatest thing since sliced splotch.”
“And after he took your son back, he never used the gateway again?” Sabine asked.
“He claimed he destroyed it,” she whined. “I wish he had never found a way out of Foo in the first place. Lying on the floor like a fool. Disbelieving the very place he later fought to come back to.” Amelia was trying to keep her voice emotionless, but it was obvious she missed Hector.
Though he tried not to show it, Sabine was angry; the few shadows around him swirled and spit. He had one remaining question. “Is this the house in which Hector originally escaped from Foo?”
Amelia looked surprised by the question. “It is,” she said, obviously bothered but trying not to show it.
“Where is the room he laid in?” Sabine asked, a wicked excitement rising in him. “The room he stopped believing in?”
“Why?” she asked, more quickly than she should have.
Sabine’s shadows fluttered. “Show me,” Sabine demanded.
Amelia got up from the couch. “You come into my house and start asking to see things. I suppose if I say no I’ll wake up perched on the Cliffs of Dwell with small children playing behind me—small children who might accidentally knock me over and to my death.”
“I suppose that’s a possibility,” Sabine said, confirming the threat. “Now show me.”
Amelia looked disgusted and confused. Sabine followed her down a dark hallway into the far corner of her home. He knew he was on to something. He had heard the story many of times of how when Hector had returned to reality after losing his belief in Foo, he had gone to the exact spot in Ohio he had originally been taken from. It only made sense that upon coming back to Foo, he might have reentered in the exact spot he had slipped away from. Sabine cursed himself for not putting the pieces together sooner. He had been trying to make the solution too big and too mysterious. But, if what he was now thinking were true, then that spot—in this house—was where he would find the opening to the gateway from this end.
Sabine’s small, coal-like heart burned with excitement.
Amelia was frightened. She pointed to a doorway at the end of the hall. “It’s just a dumb little room,” she said. “He never let me even clean it. I’ve left it just as he left it.” She stopped, hoping Sabine would just look in and then leave. “That’s it,” she said.
Sabine looked at the door. He breathed in deeply, drawing the hairs beneath his nose back up into his nostrils. He breathed out and they reappeared. The door opened without a sound.
The room was brightly lit, illuminated by seven large candles. In the center of the floor was a shaggy thought rug. Sitting on the rug was a table with a clear glass top with thin gold edging. There was nothing on the table, allowing a person to see the entire rug beneath it. The color and design of the thought rug shifted and changed as the thoughts of Amelia and Sabine entered the room. Part of the carpet grew dark while the other yellowed with long orange streaks.
The room was dusty and filled with books, stacked in piles on the floor and spilling out of the tall shelves against the walls. A number of the books lay open. In one corner an old clock struggled to tick, and the only window in the room was open, letting in the scent of a Foo afternoon and adding even greater light.
Sabine’s shadows danced about the room. They had searched this house many times before. As Sabine moved deeper into the room, new, smaller shadows formed as he passed each candle.
“Have you read these books?” Sabine asked Amelia, wondering if perhaps there were clues in them as to the whereabouts of the gateway.
Amelia looked nervous. She pushed her heavy glasses up on the bridge of her nose and stuck out her chin, “I’m lucky to read the headlines on the Scroll.”
“What a waste. Books are for fools,” Sabine said casually. Two of the books that were lying open snapped shut and scurried off as if insulted. Sabine walked slowly around the room, touching things and looking for some indication his thoughts had been correct.
“He spent a lot of time in here?” Sabine asked.
Amelia didn’t answer. She sniffed instead, the tip of her ugly nose twitching as she did.
Sabine touched the walls and listened. Nothing.
“Look all you want,” Amelia said irritably. “What do I care if you take anything. Crazy fool. Just leave the candles burning so your shadows don’t start knocking everything over,” she added. Without excusing herself she stepped fro
m the room, leaving Sabine alone.
“Where is it?” he said aloud, knowing he was closer to the gateway than he had ever been before. He could feel the answer was here. His black soul was sizzling. “You’re here somewhere. You exist,” he proclaimed. “Show yourself,” he challenged, as if the gateway were a being in hiding.
Nothing.
Amelia stuck her head back into the room. “When you’re done talking to yourself, just let yourself out. I’m going to make splotch at Caroline’s. Don’t let the cat out.”
It is hard to feel sinister when a nervous old woman with a lumpy nose is telling you not to let the cat out. But Sabine had enough sinister self-esteem for ten beings.
“All right,” he sneered.
Amelia closed the door and walked to the front of the house. She knew that the cause was in big trouble.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Blown Away
Leven, Winter, Geth, and Clover had a lot of things working against them. For starters, they were hundreds of miles out to sea in a car, driving on ice across an ocean that was beginning to act up, and they were running out of gas.
The car began to buck and shiver as it choked on the final drops of gasoline. Geth and Clover had been asleep for the last couple of hours, and Winter had been telling Leven any stories she knew in an effort to keep him awake. It had been days now since he had closed his eyes, and he was beginning to show real signs of sleep deprivation.
“The car is stopping,” he cried. “Please, let me sleep. Please.”
“No,” Winter said, pinching him on the arm to keep him awake.
The ocean around them was moving and lapping up against the bridge of ice that Winter had so ingeniously created.
“I think a storm is coming,” Winter said.
The car emitted one last gasp and rolled to a stop, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
“We’re here,” Leven tried to joke.
The ocean air blew and rocked the car.
“Should we wake up Geth?” Winter asked, looking down at the snoring toothpick in her pocket.
“Why?” Leven asked. “He’d only tell us to wait and see what happens.”
“It’s worked so far,” Winter defended.
“This is working?” Leven asked, opening his arms to indicate the vast body of water they were now marooned in. Mist from the choppy sea began to spray them in the face, making everything wet and miserable.
“Do you think we could get this top up?” Leven wondered aloud.
“We could try.”
Leven and Winter cautiously got out of the car. The ice had amazing traction. Lev inched slowly along the side of the vehicle and back to where the top was folded down. He looked at the ice and marveled. He spotted a sea turtle frozen in the path. Winter was on the opposite side of the car, pulling on the top.
“All this water,” he sighed nervously. “So if you wanted to, you could make this ice go away?” Leven asked her.
“Sure,” she shrugged.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” he asked, looking around at the ocean.
“What do you mean?” she asked, tugging on the canvas covering the collapsed convertible top.
“Look around you,” Leven motioned.
Winter gazed around at the vast and endless sea. The wind was picking up, and the blue sky was taking on massive gray clouds that looked like fat smoky marshmallows. In the distance, she could see large swells forming. A huge purple swordfish leaped from the water, arched over the ice path, and dove back down into the ocean. Winter glanced across the car at Leven and realized how completely unbelievable it was to be right where she was.
“This is a turn I never saw my life taking,” she laughed. “I was in school a couple of weeks ago, wishing I were a different person.” Winter twisted her long hair and wrung out some water. “I remember when I was about nine,” she said, “my mother . . . well, Janet, took me to a movie. I was so surprised and happy. We had never done anything like that together. Then, we get there and she has me buy a child’s ticket at a child’s price and makes me go in and open a side door so she can sneak in without paying. The worst part was once we were both inside she didn’t even want to sit by me, and on the way home she told me, ‘Get used to opening doors for people. It’s about all you’re good for.’”
Winter’s green eyes looked sadder and prettier than Leven had ever seen them.
“Now look at me,” Winter finally said, hoping to lighten the mood. “Stranded in the middle of an ocean.” Winter smiled.
“She was wrong,” Leven said. “I mean, look at you now. We’ll find a way out of this,” Leven said confidently. “I don’t know just how we—”
Leven stopped to pay attention to the image suddenly playing in his head.
His brown eyes burned gold. Lights and shadows began to fill his mind. Leven envied Winter’s ability to use her talent on cue and with efficiency. He couldn’t even think clearly most of the time, much less put his skill to work. Now, however, his tired head was suddenly clear, and he could see the future. Brighter lights burned within him. He saw they were driving across the ocean with the wind pushing them. They were moving slowly, and Leven let his mind tell the wind where to blow and how fast to push them. In his thoughts they were suddenly racing across the ice faster than they had been going before.
“Lev,” Winter interrupted. She was still pulling on the cover. “I can’t get this roof up without you.”
Leven looked at the car top and thought of what he had just seen. “Kneel on the trunk,” he said excitedly, climbing up on the trunk himself.
They both got on the back and started to pull the top out and up. As it extended it naturally wanted to angle forward.
“We need to bend it back,” Leven shouted above the wind. The waves and the noise were quickly growing louder.
“It won’t close if we bend it,” Winter said, baffled.
“We don’t want it to close. We can use it for a sail that will help blow us the rest of the way.”
Winter instantly understood and began working to free the top. As it came up out of its storage compartment, Leven and Winter stood up on the trunk of the car, and pulled the top back in a direction it was not designed to go. The two side bars bent, and the entire top stood straight up. The vehicle bucked and shivered from the wind.
“We need to bend it back just a bit more,” Leven instructed loudly.
The waves in the ocean were beginning to splash up against the car, making the back end they were standing on slippery.
“Pull!” Leven yelled, struggling to keep his footing.
Winter pulled. Together they were able to bend the top back. It stood at an angle slanting slightly backwards.
“That should work,” Leven said.
They climbed back into the front seats just as a huge wave crashed down and watered them all. Geth woke up and inquired what was going on, as casually as if he were someone asking what time it was on a lazy summer afternoon. Clover woke up complaining. Leven concentrated and could see the wind growing in large gray sheets from the west and flying toward them. Another wave rocked against the car and pushed the vehicle so close to the edge of ice the back left tire slid off.
“We’re going to slide in,” Clover shouted.
“Don’t worry,” Leven hollered back, “hold on!”
Geth popped out of Winter’s pocket, looking excited. Just as Leven had seen earlier, a terrific wind came rushing across the water, from behind them. It caught the jerry-rigged sail and began to move the car forward.
“It’s working,” Winter shouted happily, her hair flying wildly.
“Of course, at this rate it will take us a year to get there,” Clover complained, the gray fur on his body wet and funny-looking. He was wringing water out of the bottom hem of his cloak.
“Don’t worry,” Leven said again. “The real wind is coming.”
The air surged, and in a second the car was flying over the ice path.
“Impressive,
” Geth complimented Leven.
The wind was so strong they could feel the back wheels of the car lift off the ground. Leven kept his mind on the wind and the future to give them thrust the entire rest of the way there. Winter, in her wisdom, curled the sides of the ice so as to create a half pipe and made the path smooth. The vehicle surged ahead.
“Can you keep the wind up?” Winter yelled.
“If you can keep the ice in front of us,” Leven replied, closing his eyes to better concentrate.
“You won’t fall asleep, will you?” she asked, concerned that he had his eyes shut.
“I’ve never felt more awake,” he yelled. “But when we reach the shore I might be a little exhausted.”
“We’ll deal with that then.” Winter smiled.
Geth drifted back to sleep as Clover sang to himself until he too was sleeping. Leven looked over at Winter as she rested her head, and he glanced in the rearview mirror at Clover. The sound of the wind pushing them was noisier than the car engine had been, but amidst the noise he couldn’t help but marvel at his life. The waves bulked up and crested all around, and the sky darkened as night came on.
Still, the wind pushed them speedily across the ocean.
ii
Sabine sat, the candles burning bright, each one growing taller as it burned. The old woman had returned and since gone to bed.
Still Sabine sat.
He was more convinced than ever that he was onto something. This room held the answer and he knew it. He stared at the walls and mumbled about the wait and the value of his time. Books shifted and moved about cautiously, taking care not to come in contact with him.
As the night deepened he began to grow angry. He stared at the candles, their light filling the room. Amelia had instructed him to keep them burning, but Sabine had a sudden feeling in his thick hard heart. He wet his forefinger and thumb with his coarse tongue and reached over to the candle closest to him. He pinched the wick to extinguish the flame. There was a soft hissing sound as a thin stream of smoke drifted up. Sabine stood and did the same to another candle and another until they were all out. The room was dark except for what little moonlight was filtering in through the window. The pale light rested on the thought rug in the center of the room.
