Dandelion Fire

by N. D. Wilson

  There was a crest at the top, the same green man that had sealed both the warning letters that had come through this cupboard before. But this time there was a slight difference. The bearded man's head was still set in the middle of the circle, and vines wrapped around his head and climbed out of his nose, ears, and mouth, but in the middle of all the leaves draped over his chin, there was something else. Henry widened his eyes and blinked more tears down his cheeks. The man was sticking out his tongue.

  Like the others, the message was typed, but it was much shorter, and it looked like a form letter with blanks filled in. And it was signed thoroughly, with an extra little handwritten note at the bottom.

  Henry read the note once. He tried to read it through again, but no amount of blinking could clear his eyes. He left the Badon Hill cupboard open and crawled slowly back onto his bed, wincing and beginning to feel extremely sorry for himself.

  He turned off his lamp and settled his face into his pillow.

  He did not see the beam of yellow light shining out of the small post-office box below Badon Hill. And if he had, he wouldn't have cared.

  smelled fire.

  His lamp was not on, but his attic room flicked with orange light. He sat up on his bed. Everything was wrong. His space was narrower, and his doorway was wider. His nightstand was missing entirely. So was the end of his room.

  He slid up onto his pillow and put his back against the wall. The cupboards beside him, doors he didn't recognize, stretched across the room and stopped where they always had. But instead of another wall, there was another place.

  A low fire burned under a stone mantel, providing the only light. A high-backed chair crouched on either side of the fire, and in one of them, there sat an enormous man. His face was hidden.

  Henry inhaled slowly. He was dreaming. He had to be.

  The man leaned forward, pressing his fingertips together, half of his long, sideburned face still shrouded in shadow. “No,” he said, and his voice gave Henry chills. “The dream is mine. I come to give you gratulations. Your morphosis begins.”

  Henry said nothing. He didn't understand.

  “This change,” the man continued. “What power set flame to your flesh?”

  Henry looked around his imitation room and then squinted at the man beside the fire. Dream or not, he didn't want to be here.

  The big man slid forward in his seat. His voice quickened. “What did your eyes ken?” he asked, and he sounded greedy. “You have seen natura's mage, and your body revolts. It shall die or be changed. What did you see?”

  “I was struck by lightning,” Henry said. He stood up and stepped toward his bedroom doorway.

  “Henry?” He could hear his cousin's voice on the other side.

  “You will stay, yet.” The man's voice deepened. He rose from his chair, filling the little room. The fire dimmed behind him. “The walls are of my imagine. They will not breach.”

  Henry's hand was on a knob. The doorway was trying to disappear. Instead it flickered and narrowed back to its usual self.

  Henry stepped into nothingness, and he closed the door behind him.

  Henrietta knew her parents wouldn't want her to wake Henry, so she hadn't asked. She'd left Richard and Anastasia bickering over their breakfast and hurried up to the attic. She tapped lightly on Henry's door, and when she didn't hear any response, she went in.

  “Henry?” she asked.

  Henry was facedown on his bed. His arms were tight against his sides. Henrietta dropped onto the bed beside him and poked his shoulder. “Henry? Wake up.” She stood, slid her hands beneath him, and rolled him onto his side. “Are you feeling better?” she asked. “Up now! We've got places to see.”

  Henry's eyes were swollen shut and sealed with crusted grime.

  Henrietta backed into the doorway, but she couldn't leave, and she couldn't look away from Henry's face. Blue webs of veins stood out behind his lifeless skin, and his dry lips were swollen and splitting.

  “Henry?” she asked again. His eyes were the worst part. The eyelashes that were still visible beneath the inflated lids were glued to his cheekbones, tangled in gunk that his tear ducts had pumped down the sides of his nose, around the corners of his mouth, and even across his temples and into his hair. Patches of the flesh-toned eye glue had hardened on his pillow.

  Henry's body stiffened. One leg rose an inch off the bed, and a moist groan rattled in his throat.

  “Are you awake?” Henrietta asked.

  “No,” Henry slurred. “I'm dead.”

  Henrietta moved back to the bed. “Um, Henry, can you open your eyes?”

  The skin of his bulging eyelids quaked briefly. They looked like they'd been stretched around plums. “No,” he said. “I can't.” He licked his lips and winced, then put his hands up to his eyes and felt gently around the sockets.

  “They're huge,” he said. He started scratching carefully at the crust, and Henrietta grimaced and turned around.

  “I'm gonna get you a rag or something,” she said. “I'll be right back.”

  Downstairs, Henrietta ran hot water over a washcloth and looked at her own eyes in the mirror above the sink. She felt worse now, for thinking that Henry had been faking. But she had seen the lightning strike, and if any had hit him, it had to have been some invisible strand. And she'd never heard of lightning giving anyone puffed-up, goopy eyes. Usually they just died or went deaf or had troughs plowed in their skin that made it look like the bark on some old lightning tree out in the fields. It had been the troughs and the charred, split skin that had made her realize she didn't really want to get struck by lightning. She'd checked a book out from the library, and the first picture was all it had taken. Under the right circumstances, she was still willing to consider being sucked up by a tornado.

  Maybe Henry had allergies. She smiled. Maybe he was allergic to pollen, he had hay fever, or something. Allergic to pollen and lightning.

  She was spending more time in the bathroom than she needed to, but she wasn't exactly in a hurry to look at Henry's face again.

  Upstairs, Henry heard her climbing back to the attic. He had managed to sit up on his bed, and he'd scraped his eyelids mostly clear. Pinching the soft flesh, he lifted, leaving eyelashes stuck to his cheeks. Then he lifted higher. He blinked, lifted his lids up again, and rolled his eyes. He saw nothing. Not darkness. Nothing. Exactly the same thing that he saw with his elbow or the back of his knee. He felt his throat constricting in panic. He tried to swallow his fear back down, but it was rising too fast, moving into terror.

  “Henry, that's disgusting,” Henrietta said. “Put your eyelids down. Your eyeballs will dry out.”

  Henry pulled them up higher. He could feel his eyes moving, ricocheting around. “I can't see,” he said simply. “I can't see. Henrietta, I can't see.” His knee started bouncing wildly. He tugged hard on his eyelids, tugged against the stretching pain.

  “Stop it!” Henrietta yelled. “You'll make it worse!” Henry felt her hands on his, the pain in his eyelids stopped, and he knew his eyes were shut. Warm wetness swallowed his face. “They looked fine,” Henrietta said. “They weren't even bloodshot. I thought they'd be pretty nasty, but it's just your eyelids. Give ‘em a minute.”

  “I'm blind,” Henry said. “God, no. I want to see. I want to see. Open my eyes. Henrietta, open them.”

  “Shhh,” Henrietta said. “Hold on. Does this feel good? I'm just wiping some of this stuff off your face, then we'll try again.”

  “Now!” Henry yelled. “Now! Get your hands off my face!” Henry swiped at Henrietta's arms and pushed her as hard as he could. He heard her stagger and hit the floor. Grabbing at his eyes, he tried to stand up. “I want to see,” he whispered. “I want to see, I want to see. Right now. I'm going to see.”

  Henrietta was crying somewhere, and he could hear people running up the stairs. He lifted his lids, but he knew that he couldn't have. There was nothing there. Then, suddenly, he realized that he must have more eyelids. Another
pair. His old eyelids must be underneath. They were still shut. He dug into his eyes with his fingers, pinching, feeling for more skin.

  “There they are,” he muttered. “There they are, there they are. They'll open.” He tripped and staggered forward. His elbow hit something hard, and his head followed.

  Strong hands gripped his wrists and pulled them away from his face.

  “Henry,” Uncle Frank said. “Enough. Breathe. Now. Breathe.”

  He was lowered to his back on the hard floor, and his arms were pinned to his chest. Frank's rough hand ran over his forehead. His thumb scraped over Henry's eyebrows and then the surface of his eyelids and cheekbones. Henry felt one eyelid open.

  “Henry?” Frank said softly. “What do you see?” “Nothing,” Henry said, and his breath spasmed in his chest. “There's another eyelid inside. You have to open it.

  Please. Can you?”

  His eye shut, and he was lifted to his feet. Frank wrapped him up from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.

  “Girls,” Frank's voice said. “You're on your own. We'll call from the hospital. Dots, find a number for Phil and Ursula.”

  “I'll come,” Richard said. “I won't be any trouble.” “Fine,” Frank said. “Hurry. But you'll be in the back.”

  Henrietta hated crying. Nothing was stupider than crying. The old brown truck had left an hour ago. Her mother had been in the driver's seat while her father held Henry tight, the washcloth over his eyes. Richard had been on his back, rattling around in the rusted-out bed.

  Penelope and Anastasia had followed her up to the attic. She'd cried because she was mad, because Henry had hurt her, because she'd been terrified, because she had to. Anastasia, pale, had watched silently and hadn't been rude once. Penny had hugged Henrietta, held her, and Henrietta hadn't pushed her away. Not at first.

  They were both gone now. She'd asked them to leave, politely, and they had. She was by herself, sitting on the end of Henry's bed, and she was still a little shaky.

  Everything inside her wanted to say that Henry would be fine, that if he'd just sucked it up and stopped freaking out, his eyes would have been normal. But she knew that probably wasn't true. Maybe. Either way, she hated it when people lost control. It made everything worse. So did crying.

  Henrietta flopped back onto Henry's bed, but jerked up at the touch of the wet pillowcase. She picked the pillow up to flip it over, and froze. There was a piece of paper on the bed, stamped with the same green man seal that had been on the faeren letters. She read the “A Lert” quickly, and then slowly, and then she stared at the signature and the note.

  She sighed and flipped the paper away from her. Henry had been trying to go through the cupboards by himself. What else could they mean by “tampering and transportation”? Of course he'd been trying. He got mad at her when she did anything on her own, but he would never include her in anything if he didn't have to. The only reason she even knew about the cupboards at all was because she'd caught him chipping the plaster off his wall in the middle of the night.

  But she had the key. Henry may have tried to get through the small doors, but it wasn't possible. He needed her. And now he was either blind or going nuts or both or faking everything but his swollen eyelids. She could have helped him. They could have gone through dozens of cupboards by now.

  She wondered where he kept Grandfather's journal. Probably tucked under his socks, where he kept everything.

  Henrietta slid down the bed toward his nightstand-dresser and reached for the top drawer. Before her hand touched the handle, three sharp cracks burst from the cupboard wall behind her. She jumped and turned, scanning over the cupboards' formation. None of the doors were open.

  Three more cracks rattled in the wall, and on the second, her eyes caught something behind the glass in the little post-office box. She moved back to the foot of the bed, crouched, and stared at the cloudy panel. The end of a stick, a cane, slid up against it from behind and rapped sharply. Then it withdrew. After a moment of silence, a folded piece of paper replaced it.

  “Henrietta?” Anastasia's voice came up the stairs. “Do you want to come down? What are you doing?”

  Henrietta twisted and spoke over her shoulder. “No thanks,” she said. “I'm just thinking.”

  “What about?” Anastasia asked.

  Henrietta stood up and moved to Henry's dresser. His sock drawer was empty. Socks only. “Just Henry!” she yelled. One drawer down, beneath Henry's T-shirts, she found what she was looking for: the two volumes of Grandfather's journal rubber-banded together and a small key.

  “Zeke called for Henry,” Anastasia said. “Penny's talking to him.”

  “Good,” Henrietta said. She moved quickly back to the post-office box and inserted the key. With nervous hands, she pulled out the heavy paper and reshut the door quietly.

  “Have you seen the raggant?” Anastasia asked. “I don't know where he is.”

  “Dad says he leaves sometimes. He always comes back.” Henrietta looked down at the folded paper in her hands. “I just want to think right now, Anastasia. Why don't you look for him? Check the barn. He likes the loft.”

  Henrietta waited. Anastasia would come all the way up, or she would go away. She couldn't just keep yelling up the stairs.

  “I don't know,” Anastasia said. “Maybe I will. I hate it when Penny talks to Zeke. It's so boring to listen to, and I don't want to just sit around thinking about Henry being blind. It makes me feel sick.”

  Henrietta bit her lip and didn't say anything.

  “Fine,” Anastasia said. “I'll go bug Penny.”

  Henrietta turned the paper over in her hands. It was rough, almost fuzzy around the edges, and its surface was textured like a window screen. It had been folded and was sealed with a sprawling tree in black wax. She slid her finger beneath it.

  The page was asymmetrical, and a stamp of the same tree was set near the top. The note was sloppily handwritten and spots of ink were flecked throughout.

  Henrietta didn't know what ablution was or ansbettment or the morph, but she didn't need to. Henry had been talking to someone, and she knew who it was. She'd seen one of his letters before, and it had sounded just as halfway nuts as this one, wicked even. Fork tungs were probably lightning, and that meant that Henry had been talking to him last night, last night after he'd sent Henrietta away. And whoever this weirdo was, he was going to try to help Henry leave.

  Henrietta was confused. It would have been easy to think that Henry was doing his own exploring and trying to make his own way out of Kansas without her help. The two letters looked that way. But his eye panic had been real. He had no reason to fake blindness. Unless he was working on some kind of plan.

  Chewing her lip, she looked around the room. She needed to stop thinking. She needed to make a decision and do something. If Henry was being a weasel, she had every right to explore on her own. If he really was sick and couldn't explore himself, he would need her to do it for him. If he was dumb enough to trust the letter guy, then she should intervene.

  Henrietta picked up Grandfather's journal and turned to the diagram of the cupboards. Then she stepped back and looked up at Henry's wall and down at the ink on the page. Grandfather's key was in her pocket. She could do it right now if Anastasia didn't catch her. She would.

  She picked a door on the wall, a small, almost diamond-shaped door near the compasses in the center. It was labeled 18 in the journal. She looked at its name. Treb/Actium/Constant. She would just go through far enough to get a feel for the place. She wouldn't do a full explore. That would mean loading a backpack and getting ready and everything, and she didn't want to wait and end up changing her mind. She had to do it right now.

  Henrietta flipped pages until she found the combinations. Then she knelt on the end of Henry's bed, inhaled slowly, held her breath, and twisted the left knob through all the symbols until its large arrow was in place over the horseshoe-looking thing with little circle-ends. And then she turned the right knob, clicking
slowing through the Roman numerals until it was on IX. She double-checked the combination and slid back off the bed. She picked up the two pieces of paper and, along with the journals, tucked them under Henry's pillow. Then she turned and hurried down the attic stairs.

  On the landing, she waited, listening. She could hear Penny talking downstairs, but no Anastasia. She checked the bedroom that she shared with her sisters, and when she was sure Anastasia was either downstairs or outside, she went to Grandfather's door.

  Though her father had thoroughly mulched its surface trying to get in, it was as solid as it had ever been. Henrietta ignored her shaking hand and slid the key into the small hole in the wood. It turned, and the door swung open silently. She stepped inside, put the key in her pocket, and shut the door behind her.

  Henrietta swallowed hard. The last time she had been in the room, both of her parents had been unconscious on the floor. A stain as dark as oil marked where her father had bled. The room was silent and dusty, books lay on the floor where they had fallen the last time she'd gone through the cupboards alone, and the end of a short rope stuck out from beneath the bed. Against the wall, beside the bookshelves, was a plain cupboard door, halfway open and large enough to crawl through.

  Before she could change her mind, Henrietta got on her hands and knees and crawled into the door. The inside of the cupboard was dark and silent, and her breath tasted like dust. She inched forward, waiting.

  * * *

  The rank smell hit her in the face, the smell of sewage and hot salt water, of burning wood and tar and flesh. Voices followed, screams and yells, commands and curses. Splitting timbers.