Wood Sprites

by Wen Spencer

  “On Elfhome, my dreams are so clear and sure. Here, I have dreams but also nightmares, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. I don’t know if it’s because the magic here is screwy, as if leaking through the cracks in reality messed it up, or what. I just woke up from a doozy that I really hope is just a nightmare. You need to get out of this house. Get as far away as possible. Now. Before it’s too late. In my dream, he found you when you were much too young. Too small. Too helpless.”

  Tears filled Esme’s eyes. “God, I wish I could stay now. I know I’ve never laid eyes on you, but I do love you. I’ve seen reflections of you in my dreams; heard the echoes of your laughter. But I have to go and do what I need to do.” Esme pressed her hand to the glass. “Oh, baby, I hope you never see this. You need to find a way out of here and go. Quickly. Be safe.”

  * * *

  Esme had dreamed of them. She’d known that they were going to be here.

  Louise stared at the screen, barely able to breathe. She was seeing the future. Her dreams had started when they got the magic generator and had gotten stranger since coming to the mansion.

  “That’s it?” Jillian cried when Louise replayed the video for her. Jillian dropped her pitch to parrot Esme. “I have to go and do what I need to do. And do what? Go to a colony a zillion million miles away? What so freaking important about that?”

  “I don’t know.” Louise studied the image closely. “She’s afraid that this recording might be found, so she’s trying to be as careful as possible. If Ming had found this, there’s not much to lead him to us or betray anything else she’s trying to keep secret.”

  Now that Louise examined the video carefully, she noticed that the angle was off. Instead of showing the middle of the bookcase, it was showing the far end and one corner of the false window looking out at the fantasy Paris landscape. Esme sat off-center, so that the window’s edge dominated the screen.

  Had Esme hidden something in the window frame? Louise walked across the room to examine the window. The mural had been painted on a panel that was inset into the wall. The trim covered the seam, but as she peered closely, she could tell that there was a small gap on all four sides.

  “I think this is a door,” Louise whispered. She gave it an experimental push, but nothing happened.

  Joy bounded over and phased through the mural. Louise pressed her hand against the painted wood. It was solid. No wonder they couldn’t keep Joy trapped anywhere; she could walk through walls!

  The baby dragon bounced back through the solid panel a moment later. She had clutched in her hands a foil-wrapped packet. “It says cookie! Is it food?”

  Jillian took the packet and squinted at it. “Peach cookie crumble? It’s freeze-dried emergency food. Oh, I think it’s expired. Shelf life is only seven years, and Esme left eighteen years ago.”

  “Open it!” Joy clapped her tiny hands together. “I’m so hungry! Gimme! Gimme! Nom, nom, nom!”

  Jillian gave Louise a questioning look. Louise wasn’t sure when she got to be the one that decided everything. Had it always been this way and she hadn’t noticed before? She shrugged.

  “I think it should be okay. I think when it’s freeze-dried that shelf life means that it’s still at the same nutrient level.”

  “I can check.” Nikola sounded eager to help. The last few days had been hard on him.

  “Yes, could you?” Louise searched the mural for how the door opened as Jillian dealt with the hungry baby dragon. “There must be some kind of room behind this panel. Esme wanted us to find it. She must have left some kind of clue as to how to open it.”

  “You’re right, Lou,” Nikola said. “The food loses its nutrient value after it expires, but it continues to be eatable in an emergency as long as it’s stored correctly and the package isn’t compromised.”

  “Wait!” Jillian cried as she tried to keep the packet out of Joy’s reach. “It needs water.”

  There didn’t seem to be any type of keyhole. It was possible that the lock was operated from a switch hidden elsewhere. Louise scanned the room. If she were going to hide a switch or a key, where would she put it? She wouldn’t use anything like a light switch. With the mansion’s cleaning staff poking around, someone was sure to notice it eventually. Certainly she could understand not putting in a straightforward lock—a keyhole invited lockpicks.

  Actually a magnetic lock would make sense. Esme could keep the key with her and yet the lock would stay hidden from search. Unfortunately, Joy wouldn’t be able to open a magnetically locked door from the other side. Esme created the secret room when she remodeled her bedroom. Esme would have hidden the card somewhere in the room before leaving Earth. She knew that they were going to be trapped here.

  “Oh, you little monkey!” Jillian cried as Joy shoved fistfuls of the now wet dessert into her mouth. “You better wash your hands before getting into our bed!”

  “Mish nummy.” Joy looked like a squirrel, her cheeks puffed out with food.

  “Wish I could eat,” Nikola said wistfully. “It looks fun.”

  “You’ll be able to eat after you’re born.” Jillian patted Nikola on the head. “You just have to be patient.”

  Okay, so maybe Esme hadn’t known they were going to be there. She had obviously been expecting one kid, not twin girls and four unborn children inside a robotic dog. Apparently she’d thought Alexander would be her only child.

  Where would she hide something for Alexander? The room presented a mind-bogglingly large number of hiding places.

  “You’re about to leave Earth.” Louise slowly turned in circle, scanning the room. “You’re never coming back. You’re only here because you want to keep up appearances; you don’t want your evil stepfather to guess you have some grand scheme. It’s natural to say good-bye to your mother, so you’re here, saying good-bye. But then you have a glimpse of the future—your daughter is going to be dragged to this mansion and locked up by the man you fear the most.”

  “We’re not locked up.”

  Yet, Louise thought but didn’t say. “Your ace in the hole is a secret room that you’ve stocked with food and God knows what. Where do you hide the key?”

  Jillian snorted as she attempted to keep Joy from stuffing all the food into her mouth. “Chew first! Nobody is going to take the rest.” Once Joy actually paused to chew, Jillian glanced around the room. “Considering Esme’s ‘clues’ so far, it’s not going to be anywhere sane. I say we just forget about finding it and pick the lock.”

  There was the possibility that Esme would have made the hiding place too obscure, going on some weird trust that they’d be able to figure out the clues in time.

  Jillian continued, “If I was going to leave a key for a kid I’d never met but was fairly sure they were going to be smart, I’d put it someplace famous. Someplace literary. I’d put it in a bottle labeled ‘drink me’ like Alice in Wonderland. Or inside a seaman’s chest, like Treasure Island.” Jillian pointed at the steamer trunk that served as a dresser.

  They searched the trunk while trying to think of other famous hiding spots.

  “This is Esme. It’s not going to be obvious,” Louise said once they had pulled out drawers and checked the lining. “Still, she was under a time restraint. She couldn’t get too elaborate and still expect us to find it.”

  “April, Tim Bell, and Lain all were on Elfhome, so she couldn’t give anything to them,” Jillian said.

  “She didn’t trust her mother or Ming or anyone that we know of.”

  The only clue she seemed to have left regarding the secret door was the video, which showed the mural. Louise went back to examine it closely again. Obviously the mural had been painted ages prior to Esme filming her warning, so whatever clue she would have left would have been added. The mural was a busy landscape of a Paris that never existed. Odd steam machines labored through a Victorian-period city landscape while great airships drifted overhead.

  Was there anything added? Louise peered at all the tiny little deta
ils. The little windows of the houses. The storefronts. The people in Victorian dress.

  “The Dahe Hao.” She read the name written on the gondola of one of the airships. “That was Esme’s spaceship, wasn’t it?”

  Louise frowned at the mural for a minute, thinking. “Let’s go with the assumption that this is one of Esme’s stupid clues. She realized that we were going to be here and would need to get through this door. She shifted the vanity so the door would be in the video she left and then she wrote this name here. She couldn’t have written it when she was a teenager because she wouldn’t have known it was the name of her ship.” Scratch that if Esme was a precog; magic skewed the normal odds. “Probably didn’t know.”

  “The models!” Jillian cried. “I bet it’s one of the airship models.”

  They looked up at the models hung from the twenty-foot ceiling.

  “Oh, she has to be nuts,” Louise murmured.

  “How would she even get up to them without everyone in the mansion knowing?”

  “She’s an astronaut. She has to be smart.”

  “And how are we going to get it down?”

  Louise studied the models. “Same way.” She pointed to the one that most closely matched the Dahe Hao in the mural. It nearly touched the bookcases. “She used the library ladder.”

  * * *

  The twins rolled the ladder to under the model airship, and Louise climbed up to the top. The maids hadn’t started on the top shelves yet; they were thick with dust. There was one faint smudge in the dust, as if someone had put out their hand to balance themselves after a first layer of dust had settled. Had it been Esme? Or someone searching for the key?

  Louise turned to study the nearest airship model that was still two feet from the bookcase. Like most of the room, the airship was steampunk in design, a cobbling of improbable and might-have-been. A brightly striped balloon held up a wooden pirate ship complete with five small bronze cannons. It had been crafted with amazing detail. The balloon was stiffened so it looked plump with hydrogen. Hemp ropes like sailing ships’ rigging wove a net around it and fastened it to the wooden hull with dozens of miniature knots. Tiny sandbags and an anchor dangled over the sides. Instead of a wooden rudder there was a massive airplane prop. The original name had been scratched off the bow and “Dahe Hao” had been printed in its place with a Sharpie.

  If this was indeed where Esme hidden the key, she’d done a good job for something seemingly spur of the moment. Louise couldn’t see anything resembling a key on the ship.

  “Well?” Jillian had lost patience. She stood with her hand on the ladder like her curiosity was going to overwhelm her common sense.

  “It’s well hidden, but I’m sure this is it.” Louise couldn’t shake that feeling even as she stared at the model. Since they couldn’t find a keyhole, she was fairly positive that the key had to be to a magnetic lock. How well hidden it was depended on when Esme started to use the airship as a hiding spot. Had she originally carried the card with her or kept it stashed someplace lower? No, that would be too dangerous. Esme had no more privacy than they did. The model was a perfect long-term storage area. The location wasn’t improvised, but the clues pointing to it were.

  So there was probably a hidden trigger or switch that opened up the airship. There were all the little sandbags and such dangling from the side, but pulling on one seemed risky. It would be too easy to pull the entire model down. So a switch or a knob. The five cannons seemed the most obvious choice. Of course if she was wrong, she might be snapping off delicate pieces. It occurred to Louise that as far as Esme knew, there were five children in her family, thus the nicknames for the flying monkeys. Esme was number three or the middle cannon.

  Louise carefully twisted the center barrel. It turned easily. There was a small click and the floor of the quarterdeck flipped up, revealing a small compartment built into the stern of the ship. Inside was a key card.

  * * *

  The method to Esme’s madness was revealed in the secret room beyond the door. By covering the windows and creating the framed steampunk cityscapes, she’d been able to disguise the fact that she had actually created a fake wall four feet out from the real wall. It created a long, tall, narrow treasure room stuffed full of things that Esme wanted to keep hidden from Edmond and his staff. Louise couldn’t imagine, however, how Esme had managed to get everything past the elves unnoticed. There was a huge supply of freeze-dried food, both in packets like Joy had carried out and in large cans.

  “Food?” Joy danced on the shelf in front of the large cans.

  Jillian picked up one. “Turkey tetrazzini. Yes, it’s food. Twenty-five-year shelf life—and it’s still good. Makes ten one-cup servings. It’s a lot of food. Diced turkey, asparagus, and gourmet pasta noodles in a flavorful sauce. I wonder what kind of sauce is tetrazzini.”

  “Is it yummy?”

  “I’m not sure.” Jillian sorted through the cans. “There might be something more familiar. Spaghetti with meat and sauce. Chicken teriyaki with rice. Blueberry cheesecake.”

  Joy squealed, making them all wince. “Cake! Cake! Cake!”

  Louise laughed, suddenly giddy with the sense of relief. Esme’s spirit was here in this secret room, strong and protective. They weren’t totally alone.

  The secret room and all that it promised lifted Jillian’s spirits. For the first time since the play, she almost seemed normal. They spent the day inventorying everything the room held, killing the hours before Shutdown. Some of it was extremely logical, like lockpicks and Swiss army knives, some more eccentric, like sharpened wooden stakes and a mallet.

  Jillian held up one of the stakes. “See, we’re not the only ones that see them as vampires.”

  “That’s probably from before the first Startup. I’m fairly sure Esme knew they were elves after that.” Maybe.

  Joy held out something wrapped in foil. “Candy?”

  Louise took it and eyed the item. “No, this is a glow stick. It’s not food. I’m not sure if it’s even any good.” She unwrapped it, snapped it in the middle, and shook it. The chemicals had degraded to the point where the glow stick barely gleamed, but it was enough to impress the baby dragon.

  “Ooohhh.” Joy murmured at the glow. “Pretty.”

  “It just makes light.” Louise handed it back to her. “It’s not good to eat.”

  Joy disappeared into the upper shelves, a faint gleam of green marking her passage.

  Louise crouched to check the bottom shelf. There were plastic storage boxes with airtight lids. She opened the first one and found old newspaper clippings. Louise actually had never seen a newspaper before. She spent a few minutes in awe of the feel of the paper and how thin it was. She puzzled over the section of text on one side, talking about two airplanes colliding in midair. Then she flipped over the clipping. Neil Shenske in full spacesuit gazed up her. The headline read “Astronaut Killed in Shooting.” It was the same photograph that Esme had included in the Chinese puzzle box, only that picture had identified him as the King of Denmark. The newspaper gave all the pertinent details. Why had Esme left them the mislabeled photograph and not this article?

  Almost as if in answer to her question, she noticed that the words “police have no leads” had been underlined in red.

  In Hamlet, the King of Denmark was killed by Claudius, who then married Queen Gertrude and became Hamlet’s stepfather. Esme had labeled Anna’s photo as Queen Gertrude. If the roles continued to pair up, then Ming was the king’s murderer. Esme must have believed that Ming had killed Neil Shenske so he could marry Anna.

  Louise flipped through the clippings. They were all on the shooting. Three people had been killed and five more wounded when a lone shooter opened fired at a high school science fair. In an age before cell phones, the person had evaded the handful of surveillance cameras on the school grounds. Witnesses stated that the shooter was tall and slender, but that was the end of the agreement. Follow-up stories spoke of candlelight vigils and angst-filled funera
ls, but there was never more evidence that led to a killer.

  “Joy!” Jillian cried from the other side of the narrow room. “Oh, oh, don’t get that on the paper!”

  Louise glanced up and groaned. Empty glow sticks lay on the floor, snapped in two after being activated. There were little gleaming paw prints all over the shelves and walls. Joy perched on Jillian’s shoulder, holding on to her hair while trying to finger-paint on the paper that Jillian was studying.

  “No, no, this may be important.” Jillian tried to hold the paper farther away from the baby dragon. “Here, let me find something else.”

  “What is it?” Louise quickly tucked away the box of newspaper clippings. Jillian probably would see Neil’s murder as proof that Ming had killed their parents. The possibility still rocked Louise, but like Esme she’d found no evidence. At least not yet. Jillian couldn’t take another hit. Until Louise found something more than a niggling fear, she couldn’t let Jillian know.

  “Esme has dozens of maps of caves.” Jillian held up a blank sheet of paper for Joy to finger-paint. “Here, play with this instead. If Esme was just into spelunking, I don’t think she’d have the maps in here. I think they’re important.”

  Louise eyed the crowded shelves of the long, tall, secret room. It was going to take them days to dig through it. In a few hours, though, Shutdown would start. “We should go to bed early. We’re going to get up at midnight and try to reach Orville.”

  * * *

  At first, every attempt to dial through to their cousin resulted in “All circuits are busy, please try again later.” At six in the morning, the phone clicked and Orville’s voice mail picked up on the first ring. “Hi, I’m not on Earth with the rest of Pittsburgh. I got permission from the EIA to ride out Shutdown at one of the enclaves. I got this feeling Tinker might come back from Aum Renau, find everyone had gone to Earth without her and just freak. You know the drill; I’ll be back after Startup.”