The Unseen

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

That night after dinner Xandra went to her room early, very tired from clumping around on crutches all day. Tired or not, she went directly to the window, but although she waited and watched for several minutes, the garden was its old self, neatly dull and uninteresting. Getting into her pajamas, she threw herself down on her bed and was just lying there among all her animals when something began to happen. She smelled it first, that same old interesting slightly skunky odor, and then a whiff of the soft milky smell of a very young kitten. There were sounds too, a soft, quickly fading purr, and a distant clatter that might have been the beginning of a baby barn owl's call. Sitting up quickly, she looked around the room, but there was nothing to see. Only the packed full bookshelves and above them the pictures and posters. It wasn't until she squinted and glanced quickly from side to side that she saw, or almost saw, something small and fuzzy skittering along the baseboards and disappearing from sight around the open closet door. That was all, but it was enough to remind her of what she had been told about the Unseen. That they were everywhere, all the time.

  Very soon afterward she went to sleep and woke up feeling, well, not great, perhaps, but a lot better than sometimes. By getting out of bed immediately she managed to be the first one, the first sibling at least, at breakfast. Only Helen, the lawyer/mother, was there, having her coffee while she leafed through a stack of papers. When Xandra came in, she marked her place carefully before she said. “Well, hello, dear. What a surprise.” And some other things about how pleased she was about Xandra's “very real” recent improvements like being places on time. “And,” she said, smiling and raising her famous eyebrows, “no more intrafamily altercations, at least none that I've been privy to.”

  Xandra didn't appreciate the stuff about “very real improvements,” as if she'd only made phony ones before, but she didn't let it spoil her good mood. Instead she even dropped a hint or two about how she might have changed her mind about having her teeth straightened. And later on the way to school she brought up the subject with the father, who said it was fine with him and he'd ask Clara to arrange it right away.

  But school was a terrible letdown. Belinda wasn't there. At home sick, maybe, Xandra thought. Lots of people had been out that month with some kind of stomach flu. The kind that hit hard but usually didn't last very long. Most people were only out for two or three days, but on Friday Belinda still wasn't there. It was Friday afternoon that Xandra went to talk to the school secretary and found out that it wasn't the flu at all. It was a lot worse.

  “Oh no,” Mrs. Green, the secretary, said. “Belinda is leaving. She came in yesterday morning to ask how to go about getting her records sent to another school.”

  “Another school? What school?” Xandra was dismayed. “Where is she going?”

  “She didn't say.” Mrs. Green seemed to be very busy. As she started to pick up the phone, she said, “Perhaps she'll let you know.” While Xandra was still standing there staring, Mrs. Green dialed a number and began to talk. Xandra went out to meet Clara and Gussie in a state of shock. She was quiet on the way home and Gussie, for once in her life, was quiet too, as if she understood.

  But it was that night at dinner that another “intrafamily altercation” happened and this time it definitely wasn't Xandra's fault. At least it didn't start out that way. Henry, the stockbroker, was home in time for dinner that night but not Helen, the lawyer. But right there at the dinner table in front of everybody, Henry started asking Clara to call Dr. Baldwin, the family orthodontist, to arrange some appointments for Alexandra. Xandra cringed, expecting the worst, and it happened. One of the twins grinned at her and said something sarcastic about how a certain party must have changed her mind about refusing to run for Miss America. Not everyone at the table heard him, but the ones who did, the other twin and Quincy, had been a part of an old argument about Miss America contests. An argument in which Xandra always said beauty contests were stupid and insulting and the rest of them usually made remarks about how she was just jealous of good-looking girls.

  The other twin and Quincy laughed and said things like “As if,” and “Good luck, kid, you'll need it.” And then all three of them just sat there grinning at her until she jumped up, picked up her glass and threw the water at the nearest twin, who happened to be the one who had started it. And then, forgetting all about her crutches, she ran out of the room and up the stairs.

  It wasn't until later that she remembered about the crutches and decided it didn't matter. She was supposed to quit using them tomorrow anyway. And if her ankle had hurt at all on her way up the stairs, she'd been too angry to notice it.

  Back on the window seat in her own room, it wasn't her leg that was hurting. But a hurting was there, all right, so strong and fierce that she could smell it. A smoky smell she remembered well, bitter and biting in her nose and throat. Before she even turned to the window and looked down, she knew she would see them, and she did, oozing out of the darkest shadows and glancing up at her with fiery eyes. Shuddering, she turned quickly away and got ready for bed.

  She was hiding under the covers and armloads of animals, but still very much aware of frightening smells and sounds, when she suddenly heard something quite different. The loud, only too real rattle of a doorknob, and a familiar voice whispering her name. Sitting up, she looked toward the door in time to see something sliding under it. Something small and white and flat.

  The note said, “Hey, I'm sorry. Anyway I didn't mean it the way you took it. You'd be a red-hot Miss America candidate. And when you get crowned, instead of crying, you could say you think the whole thing is stupid.”

  It was signed “Nicholas” and there were two PS's. The first one said, “Good shot with the water. Got me right in the eye.” And the second one, in print, said, “Yeah. Good shot. And he deserved it.” It was signed “Nelson.”

  The note was still in her hand when she went to sleep, and when she woke up a few hours later, sniffing cautiously before she sat up, the only smells were of clean sheets, furniture polish and dusty stuffed animals. However, she couldn't get back to sleep right away, and before she did, she'd made up her mind. On Saturday she would go back to the commune to look for Belinda.

  IT WAS A dark, sunless day. The bus ride was long and slow and would have been boring if Xandra hadn't had worse things than boredom to worry about. Things like whether she would get to the commune only to find that Belinda and the grandfather were already gone. And if they were still there, how they would react to her uninvited visit? What was the first thing she should say to them, and what might their answers be? She had plenty of time to go over all of it again and again before the bus finally pulled up to the lonely bus stop where Belinda had been waiting for her when she came before. But today no one was waiting, and no one else got off the bus at the run-down service station. In fact, Xandra had a distinct feeling that the other people on the bus were all staring at her as she rang the buzzer and then went down the steps, as if they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to get off at a place like that.

  She didn't blame them. If she'd still been sitting in the warm, well-lit bus, she'd probably have been feeling the same way. As the bus pulled away, she couldn't help staring after it enviously for a minute before she started to look around. To look first at the shabby service station and then up the lonely dirt road that led to Ezra's farm and the deserted commune.

  The sky was gray and getting grayer. No rain as yet, but lots of low-hanging clouds and not a hint of sunlight anywhere. Under the dull, heavy sky the service station looked as lonely and forsaken as a scene from a science fiction movie about a world where everyone had died many years before. However, when Xandra looked more closely, she noticed a bit of light coming through the dirty windows, so someone might be in there after all. Remembering what Belinda had said about using the service station's pay phone, Xandra was suddenly overtaken by an urge to do exactly that. To go into the station and use the phone to call a taxi to take her back home. For a few moments she seriously considered it, b
ut then she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and started off up the dirt road.

  The car dump came first. A place where people must have been dumping the crumpled and rusted bodies of their very dead cars for a great many years. Soon after the car dump was the first of three small tumbledown houses. And then nothing more for a long way except weed-grown fields. Just as before, all that empty space gave Xandra an uneasy, no-place-to-hide feeling, which she tried to ignore without much success. Turning up the collar of her coat against the bitter cold, she went on walking determinedly, one foot before the other, until she came at last to the driveway that led up the hill to Ezra's farmhouse.

  After dragging open the heavy gate, Xandra made her way up the driveway that led to the shabby old farmhouse. With its dangling shutters and rust-stained walls, it needed only a bat or two to look exactly like an advertisement for Halloween. With her mind flitting between haunted houses and Ezra's angry stare, Xandra walked as quietly and as fast as possible. She finally arrived at the crest of the hill, from which it was possible to look down into the deserted valley where one hundred people had once lived in a commune called Ezra's Eden. A few steps farther on she was able to see the larger of the rough, unpainted shacks, and then the one that had been Belinda's special living space.

  There was no sign of life in either cabin. No light in the windows and no smoke rising from the chimney of the larger one, as there had been when she was there before. Xandra stopped and stared, hesitant to go any farther and yet determined to be absolutely certain they were gone before she gave up and went away. She continued on down the hill slowly and watchfully. On reaching Belinda's cabin, she again hesitated before she climbed the rickety stairs, almost sure that she would find the interior completely empty and deserted. But maybe not. Maybe not yet. Hastily, she opened the door and stepped inside.

  Just as she had feared, the main room of the cabin was bare. Or almost bare. The rough wooden walls no longer held Belinda's collection of pictures and posters, and there were no books on the rough plank shelves. But sitting near the empty shelves there was a row of small sturdy boxes. Moving from box to box, Xandra confirmed her suspicion. The boxes were full of neatly packed books. So there was still hope. Belinda would never go away and leave her books, which probably meant that she and the grandfather were still around and might be back very soon. And when they arrived …

  Sitting down on one of the biggest boxes, Xandra prepared herself to wait. But she had not been waiting long when all sorts of worrisome possibilities came to mind. What if they had already gone away and were planning to send for the books at some later time, perhaps days later? And even worse, much worse, what if they had been preparing to leave when something happened to them? Perhaps something terrible. Something like …

  Xandra was at about that point in her thinking when the shaky shack reverberated to the sound of running footsteps on the stairs and the door flew open—on Belinda.

  Xandra jumped to her feet. “Oh, Belinda,” she said, and for just a moment Belinda's face echoed her happy surprise, before it closed into a tight, suspicious mask. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  “You're leaving?” Xandra's answering whisper was both a question and an accusation. “They told me at the school that you were leaving and I just had to see you again before—”

  “Why? Why did you have to see me? Haven't you caused us enough trouble?”

  “Me? Caused who trouble?”

  “Me and my grandfather.”

  “Caused you and your grandfather trouble? How did I do that?” she asked, although she was beginning to get the feeling that maybe she knew. “You mean by telling those girls that you had magical powers? What was wrong with that? They deserved to be scared a little. And I thought you must have liked the way it changed things. I mean, it sure did change how those girls were treating you. I thought that was why you wouldn't talk to me anymore, because you had so many new friends you didn't need me anymore.”

  “No.” Belinda was shaking her head. “No, I didn't like it. I tried to stop them but I couldn't and then someone told her parents and the parents called the school and …” She paused and then went on. “And that's why we're leaving.”

  Xandra was amazed. “I don't understand,” she said. “Why would that make you leave?”

  “Because it happened before. Where we used to live someone started telling people my grandfather was an evil person. And there were some people there, where we used to live, who believed in evil powers and things like that.” Belinda's deep eyes focused sharply on Xandra's face. “But he isn't evil. He never does anything to hurt people. He's just a special kind of thinker who sees in a different way and knows about things other people haven't learned about. But some people thought he was dangerous and that was why we had to come here to live.”

  Still bewildered, Xandra said, “But I thought you liked it here, in the commune.”

  “Like it?” Looking around, Belinda shrugged and threw out her hands dismissively. “Do I like this dirty old place?” She looked pained and sad.

  For a moment the word “dirty,” as in “a place with no vacuum cleaner,” made Xandra wince. It was a guilty wince but she shook off the guilt and said, “But I don't see how it could be my fault. I didn't mean to get you into trouble.” Xandra was still insisting when another voice answered, “No, I'm sure you didn't.” Xandra whirled around to see a tall, narrow figure in the open doorway. The grandfather.

  Startled and fearful, Xandra was backing away when the man's dark eyes met hers and she stood still, steadied and no longer frightened. “You meant no harm,” he was saying, “and Belinda was also speaking truthfully when she said we meant you no harm. And yet I'm afraid I did harm you by letting Belinda show you how to use your Key to evoke the world of the Unseen. I should have met you first and learned more about who you were. If I had, I would have understood that it was … too soon.”

  “Too soon for what? If it was too soon, why did I get the feather? The Key, that is.”

  The grandfather shook his head. “It's hard to say exactly why, except that merely having it in your possession might only have made you aware of the world of the Unseen, instead of being a part of it. And that awareness might have made it possible for you to—”

  “Aware of?” Xandra interrupted. “You mean I would have seen those things sometimes but they wouldn't have been able to hurt me?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Xandra stared from the grandfather to Belinda and back again before she burst out, “But what are they? Where do they come from and what are they?”

  The grandfather nodded slowly before he began. “They are everything and nothing,” he said. “A flowing river of shapeless elements that take on definite shapes only when they enter a person's field of energy. And even then they ordinarily cannot be experienced by the sense organs of humans without the use of a Key. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

  Xandra nodded uncertainly at first and then more confidently. “I think so.”

  “Yes, I think you do,” the grandfather said. “Although such forms are entirely invisible to ordinary eyes and ears, the shapes they take on seem to be influenced by, or reflections of, each individual's feelings and emotions. But if a person has never possessed a Key, she only experiences them as a kind of inner awareness.” He paused and smiled before he went on, “As when an angry person says, ‘It was really eating at me,’ or, ‘I am burning up.’ Or as another person might say that something was giving them ‘good vibes’ or ‘a great feeling.’ But the use of a Key takes one into their world. The world of the Unseen.”

  “But I can still see them sometimes,” Xandra said. “Even when I haven't used the Key.”

  “And you will continue to, I think,” the grandfather said. “Even when you no longer have the Key.”

  Xandra narrowed her eyes as she shoved her hand between the buttons of her coat to where she could feel the living warmth of the white bird's gift. “When I no longer have …�
�� she was beginning to ask when Belinda grabbed her arm.

  Pushing her toward the door, Belinda said, “Come on. We have to go now and so do you. I'll walk with you as far as the gate.”

  They didn't talk much on their way up the hill. With her mind sifting through a whirling mass of ideas and feelings, Xandra said nothing at all until they had passed the crest of the hill and were on their way across the farmyard. It was then that she asked, “What did he mean when he said when I no longer have the Key?”

  Belinda nodded and answered, “He told you before. No one has one for long.”

  Xandra thought of protesting, of saying she would never, ever, for any reason give up her enchanted gift, but when she turned to Belinda and began to speak, she found she'd lost her train of thought. Instead she asked, “Will I see you again? Will you let me know where you are and how we can go on being friends?”

  Without hesitating Belinda said, “Yes, I will.”

  And Xandra knew that it was true.

  WHEN CLARA, WHO as usual was the only one to notice that Xandra had been gone most of Saturday, asked where she had been, Xandra quickly thought up a reasonable-sounding excuse. It wasn't until after she'd said it that she realized it was the truth, or at least a part of the truth. What she said was “My best friend is moving away and I went to tell her goodbye.”

  And when Clara said, “I see. But I do wish you'd tell me when you go out,” Xandra stared at her soft round face and worried eyes and said, “Maybe I will, next time. Yeah, I promise. Next time I will.”

  Later that night, when she was in bed trying to read, but mostly thinking about what the grandfather had said, there was a soft knock on the door. A light, uncertain tapping before the door opened just a crack. Dropping her book and scattering a layer of animals, Xandra sat up quickly and, just as quickly, relaxed. The eye that was peeking through the crack was at a level that suggested either a smallish creature of the Unseen—or possibly …