Gabriel Finley and the Raven’s Riddle
Page 24
Eventually, the air in the shaft began to smell fresh and clear. Paladin glimpsed a rectangular opening ahead with a bright, starlit sky. Above them, the gate of the mausoleum hung wide open—a signal, perhaps, that Corax’s power over it was gone.
They burst out, seizing every clear breath of cool wintry air with a great sense of relief. Alighting on a patch of frosty grass, Gabriel and Paladin jumped apart and peered past the frosty cemetery stones to see the dim shapes of birds who had escaped Aviopolis. A bustard fluffed his feathers on the ground nearby. Three guinea fowl were cooing bitterly on a tree limb. A fat white ptarmigan dusted herself off as she uttered an embarrassed apology to no one in particular.
Gabriel’s thoughts turned to his father. He wondered if he had survived the long walk up the staircase.
As if in answer to his concern, a man’s voice called from behind.
“Gabriel!”
The Homecoming
Gabriel spun around and saw Mr. Finley approaching with Abby, Somes, and Pamela. They all embraced, breaths billowing in the chilly air, so glad to be reunited. Their expressions soon shifted to astonishment as Gabriel described Corax’s last moments.
“And you’re sure the robin escaped?” said Mr. Finley.
“I don’t know where he is,” said Paladin with a downhearted shrug.
“Cheer up, Paladin,” Mr. Finley replied. “We made it home, and home has its own rewards!”
Mr. Finley caught Somes’s eye after this remark. The boy nodded, as if home had a new meaning after this adventure.
A peach-colored dawn welcomed the group as they followed a path out of the cemetery. They were exhausted from their journey, but their spirits were high. The streets of Brooklyn were empty save for a lone newspaper truck growling past; the city seemed blissfully unaware of the extraordinary danger that had been averted deep underground.
“No one will ever know, will they?” mused Abby.
“I guess not,” said Gabriel.
“I hope all these talking birds will be okay,” worried Pamela. “I’d bring some of them home, but my mother … well, she’ll have a hard enough time dealing with the news that I lost my violin.”
Abby gave her a sympathetic hug. As they all began to talk about how to explain this adventure to their families, only Somes remained silent, deep in his own thoughts.
“Somes?” Abby said when they came to Gabriel’s house. “You don’t have to go home; you can stay with me if you want.”
“And you’re welcome to stay with us,” added Mr. Finley.
“No thanks,” said Somes.
Abby frowned and reached for his arm. “Somes, are you sure?”
The boy smiled softly at her. “Thanks, but I can take care of myself.”
Waving goodbye, Somes continued up the sidewalk toward his house.
Abby gave her farewells and crossed the street. She reached into her coat pocket for her house key, unlocked the door, and entered on tiptoes. It was dark in the hall. Hanging up her dusty coat, she turned the corner into the kitchen and stopped dead.
Her moms and her two sisters were clustered together by the stove, their hair disheveled, faces haggard and streaked with tears.
“What’s going on here?” Abby said.
Her big sister Viv dropped a muffin tin with a loud clatter. “What do you mean, ‘What’s going on’? We’ve been worried sick about you!” she cried.
“Where have you been?” cried Etta. “We called the police!”
“And the fire department,” said her mom the optometrist.
“And the army,” said her other mother. “And the navy.”
Abby was pretty sure this last comment was a joke.
“How dare you disappear like that!” cried Viv, smothering Abby with a pair of lobster-claw cooking mitts.
“You’d better explain exactly where you’ve been,” said her mother.
“And have something to eat!” added Etta.
Abby closed her eyes as she nestled in her sister’s hug. She felt incredibly glad to be home.
Trudy and Aunt Jaz were bustling about the kitchen when Mr. Finley, Gabriel, and Pamela entered the house. Aunt Jaz let out a tearful cry and rushed forward.
“Adam!… You came back!” she cried.
“Yes, Jasmine, I finally did.” Mr. Finley laughed and embraced her.
Trudy’s mouth opened in alarm when she saw Pamela. “I thought you were upstairs, asleep!” Then she noticed Paladin perched on Pamela’s shoulder. “Shoo, you horrible thing!” she cried. “Get away, get away!”
“C’mon, Mother,” said Pamela. “Paladin’s my friend.”
“How can a blackbird be a friend?”
“Not a blackbird. A raven. There’s a big difference,” Pamela said. “He’s very tired and very hungry. We have to feed him.”
It was then that Trudy noticed the dust all over Pamela’s clothes.
“Goodness, where have you been?”
“I told you before, Mother. Aviopolis.”
“No, where have you really been?”
“Like I said, far underground. There’s a whole city there. We barely made it out alive. I lost my violin.”
“Your violin? Oh, my goodness! Not your violin!”
“Mom! I almost died being carried by a swarm of flesh-eating birds!”
“Yes, dear, I’m sure,” Trudy replied. “But have you any idea how much that violin was worth? Oh, Pamela, what a tragedy!”
Somes entered his kitchen and discovered the pizza box still sitting on the kitchen table. He warmed a slice in the toaster oven and gobbled it down, catching the melting cheese with his tongue.
Mr. Grindle appeared in the kitchen doorway, his hair in disarray, a frown on his face.
“What are you doing here?”
“This is my home,” Somes replied.
“You ran out.”
“Yes, I did,” said Somes. “But I’m back.”
“You expect me to just let you walk in here?”
Somes looked at Mr. Grindle for a long moment. “A father is supposed to take care of his son,” he said. “And sons take care of their fathers, too.”
The man didn’t speak. Somes imagined he might strike him, or he might open the door and tell him to leave. This time, however, Mr. Grindle sat down.
“Any more of that pizza left?” he asked.
Somes nodded and turned the box toward his father.
Epilogue
Adam Finley’s return was celebrated with an enormous Christmas dinner. Trudy did most of the cooking, but Aunt Jaz insisted on adding some things that she said were Mr. Finley’s favorites. This was her excuse to make sure that the meal was full of desserts, and there were many, including Christmas gingerbread cookies in the shape of ravens, a Brooklyn blackout cake, and meringue cookies.
“All this sugar is terribly unhealthy!” complained Trudy.
“If you’d been cooped up in a cell for three years, you’d want a little sugar,” Aunt Jaz reminded her.
Trudy was willing to believe that Adam had been imprisoned, but she decided it must have been somewhere in Europe where they punish people severely for parking in the wrong place. She certainly didn’t believe in Aviopolis, or that Gabriel had rescued his father. She was most upset when Gabriel described Corax as Adam’s jailer.
“Corax, you say? No, I don’t believe it. He was a beautiful, misunderstood boy. I’m sure, wherever he is, he’s doing great things!” She stared off for a moment with a misty look in her eyes.
Mr. Finley advised Gabriel not to mention Corax to her again. “Some people simply believe what they need to believe, no matter what proof there is to the contrary,” he said.
Trudy told Aunt Jaz that Gabriel must have enticed Pamela into a manhole and taken her for a tour of the sewers beneath the city. “That would explain the dust,” she said.
Aunt Jaz just laughed.
Pamela kept trying to explain her adventure to her mother; she had her own reason for wanting Trudy to believe
ravens could talk and that a person could paravolate. Yet even when she got Paladin to talk in sentences, Trudy insisted it was a trick any parrot could do.
“I won’t have you following Gabriel down any manholes again,” she told Pamela. “Now that Adam has returned, we shall have to find another place to live. I don’t know how we’ll afford it. I’m still very upset about your violin!”
Gabriel noticed Pamela’s gloom at dinner. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I love your house,” she confessed. “I don’t want to go.”
“You don’t have to,” said Mr. Finley, who had been listening. “I’ve just offered your mom the rooms on the top floor.”
“Can we stay, Mother?” said Pamela.
“Well, I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m a strong believer in facts, and this house seems to encourage untruths.” Here, she looked sharply at Gabriel. “And there’s the matter of the violin.”
“Oh, Mother,” said Pamela in disappointment.
It was then that the doorbell rang.
Trudy opened it to a white-haired gentleman with a very handsome slate-gray raven perched on his shoulder.
“Greetings, madam. My name is Burbage.”
“Yes? What is it?” asked Trudy, puzzled that the man’s lips weren’t moving.
“It was I who spoke, madam,” said the gray raven. “Mr. Geiger here has laryngitis, the result of poor nerves and a dusty escape from a perilous abyss!”
Trudy blinked at the bird. “Oh, I … What can I do for you?”
“It is not what you can do for me, but what we can do for you, madam.”
Septimus Geiger held up a dusty, battered violin case.
“We were crossing a bridge out of Aviopolis—”
“Aviopolis?” Trudy frowned.
“Yes. As we were leaving, this case landed in Mr. Geiger’s arms. I believe it belongs to your daughter.”
Trudy ran her hands over the dusty exterior. “It landed in his arms?”
“Naturally. He couldn’t have caught it any other way,” remarked the bird.
Trudy slowly opened the case. The violin was nestled in black velvet, in perfect condition. She closed it and stared back at the raven.
“How do you like that?” Burbage grumbled to Septimus. “Not even a thank-you!”
Septimus reached into his pocket and produced a white mouse, which he threw into the air. Burbage caught it in his beak and swallowed it whole, which provoked a surprised gasp from Trudy.
Making a flourish with his hand, Septimus disappeared, leaving the gray raven hovering in the air.
“Best regards to Mr. Finley and son!” he said, and flew off over the rooftops.
When Trudy returned to the meal, she looked a little pale.
“Who was at the door?” asked Aunt Jaz.
“Oh, um, a man and a …” She frowned and shook her head. “Never mind.”
There was one secret that was tormenting Gabriel. He had been waiting for the right time to speak to Mr. Finley about a very tender subject. Late that evening, when everyone was well fed and gone to bed, he crept down from his room and found his father reading in his study.
“Yes, Gabriel?” said Mr. Finley.
Gabriel noticed that his father was sitting in front of the writing desk. Its lid was open, but there was nothing in any of the compartments.
“That will be all,” he said to the desk, replacing a book in one compartment.
The writing desk snapped its lid shut and trotted across the room, settling in a corner. Gabriel followed it with his eyes. “It does what you tell it to do?”
“Most of the time,” said his father. “But let us talk. What’s on your mind?”
“I want to know about my mother,” said Gabriel.
Finley gazed kindly at his son. “Of course, Gabriel. I’ve been waiting for you to ask. Do you remember my saying that the torc was a mischievous device?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it may surprise you to know that you owe your existence to it.”
“How?”
“If you remember, the raven Muninn made his last wish and was buried alive in a tomb. A thousand years later, I went to Iceland looking for the torc, hoping to keep my brother from finding it. At the same time, your mother came to Iceland to study the mythology of an ash tree known as the Tree of Life. The staff, you see, was made from this remarkable wood. Well, one day we arrived in the same library in Iceland, looking for the same book.”
“What a coincidence,” said Gabriel.
“More than a coincidence. Dark magic drew us there. You see, the torc craved mischief. It wanted to be discovered.”
“Why?”
“Buried for a thousand years in the caverns of Iceland, it was ignored, powerless, and forgotten. Nobody would have wandered there alone to find it. Anyway, your mother and I fell in love in that library. We hiked to the Godafoss—the waterfall of the gods—and found it so beautiful that we took a house nearby.
“We married, and for three years we did our research together and wandered the caverns.”
“But how did you ever find the tomb?” asked Gabriel.
“It was just after you were born,” said Mr. Finley. “I found an old scroll that suggested that the tomb I was looking for lay in a lower cavern I’d never explored. I’ll never forget that day—I left you and your mother, promising to return by nightfall.
“The farther I went, the more I felt a power drawing me in. One can get terribly lost in such caverns. People are always warned to go with a friend in case of an injury. I went alone, and this was part of the torc’s mischief. I wandered miles not really knowing where I was going. When I was completely lost and just wanted to go home, I heard voices singing.”
“Voices? What kind of voices?” asked Gabriel.
“Beautiful voices, and music that reminded me of home, of my wife and my baby …”
Mr. Finley paused and shook his head. “No, that’s not true,” he said. “It was the kind of music that tricks and confuses, like the siren song that made Ulysses almost go insane on his ship. I followed these voices, tripping, stumbling, until I fell into a crevasse and gashed my ankle so badly that I could barely walk.”
“It was a trap,” said Gabriel.
Finley nodded. “At the time I thought it was just an accident, but it was much worse than that. There I lay, crippled and helpless. Those strange voices stopped singing. Now I wondered if I had only imagined them. I crawled out of the crevasse and saw an archway and, beyond it, a riddle carved in the rock in an old Norse language:
“A feast has five guests.
Take just one of these guests away,
And nobody can eat. Why?”
Gabriel thought for a moment. “Well, the word feast has five letters. If you take the ‘e’ away, it’s a fast. Nobody can eat during a fast.”
“Very good,” said Mr. Finley. “When I answered the riddle, a small chamber appeared that I had not seen before. I limped into the chamber, and what I saw was astounding.”
“What was it?” asked Gabriel.
“A man—no, not a man, a warrior king—in his final resting place,” said his father. “Surrounded by his weapons, as a great chieftain might have his possessions laid out for a life in the afterworld. A magnificent leather helmet inlaid with garnets and rubies rested on his chest. There were battle-axes and swords with handles of ivory, gold, and bronze and a large shield of leather studded with silver. Beside him lay the skeleton of a raven.”
“Muninn?”
Mr. Finley nodded. “I bumped against a cluster of weapons—swords, axes, and javelins—and a stick fell in my way. A dull old stick.”
“The staff?” asked Gabriel.
Mr. Finley raised one eyebrow. “At the time, Gabriel, I thought not. It looked to be the least valuable thing in the tomb. My leg was bleeding, so I decided to use it to limp home and clean my wound. In the dim light I didn’t even notice the torc wrapped around the top, covered with centuries of dust.
“And it needed a blood sacrifice,” said Gabriel.
Mr. Finley nodded. “And it made me wish something. As I limped back the way I came, I got lost. My flashlight went dim. Soon I would be trapped in complete darkness. It was that moment when I felt so sorry for myself that I wished simply that I could get home to my family.
“Well, suddenly, the staff trembled in my hand. The next moment, my wound vanished! Then the flashlight started working. So I picked up my stride, sure that I knew my way, and guess what? I never made a single wrong turn. Outside the cave, there wasn’t a moon, yet I found my way to my car without even thinking about it. I seemed to be on some amazing lucky streak. I couldn’t wait to tell your mother.
“I stepped into the house and I could smell the stew she had cooked for dinner. It sat bubbling on the stove, and the table was set. I found you asleep in your crib, calm and contented; there was a pan upon the stove with a loaf of bread that must have just come out of the oven, because it was still steaming. There was ice in the glasses at the table. Your mother must have heard the car pull up. And yet, the moment I walked in that door, she vanished.”
“Vanished? How?” said Gabriel.
His father replied with a helpless smile. “I searched the house; wherever she went, she took no shoes or coat, for they were by the door. I called the police. For weeks, they searched for her but found nothing. It became clear to me that the torc took her the moment I would have set eyes upon her.”
“Why?” asked Gabriel.
“This is the awful thing about dark magic, you see. It takes whatever matters most to you that you’ll forever miss.”
Gabriel lowered his head sadly. “But all you wanted was to go home.”
“Yes. That’s the mischief of dark magic.”
“Then she’s gone forever?”
“Oh, no. I believe that we’ll find her. Somewhere out there, the torc must have the answer,” his father assured him.