Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire

by John August

  “Who? Us?”

  “Maybe!”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know! We’ll figure something out.”

  “Typical,” said Indra. “It’s like the sled all over again. Wild plans with no basis in reality.”

  “The sled turned out great!”

  “Yes, because someone—me!—was able to think about it practically.”

  Arlo realized he hadn’t spoken in quite a while. He’d simply been watching them argue, like it was a tennis match on TV. “I don’t think Rielle wants to be saved,” he said. “She was mostly warning me to stay away.”

  “Exactly!” said Wu. “Because it’s dangerous. She’s in danger. When someone’s in danger, you save them. That’s like basic Rangers.”

  “It’s not at all like that,” said Indra. “Let’s say someone falls through the ice—”

  “You save them!”

  “But you don’t just run out onto the ice, because the ice could break, and then you’re in the water, too. You have to move slowly. You inch across the ice on your stomach, then you throw them a rope. Or better yet, slide a ladder slowly across the ice.”

  Wu was exasperated. “Remind me never to go ice fishing with you. You’d let me drown while you’re flipping through your Field Book to find the right page.”

  “It’s page one forty-eight!”

  Arlo looked around the playground. All the other kids had gone in. Another minute and Mrs. Mayes would give them detention.

  “I’m going to tell Connor,” he said. “Tonight, after Rangers.” Wu and Indra looked over at him, surprised that he had come to a decision without them. “I don’t know what the right thing to do is. But Connor deserves to know.”

  18

  KNOTS

  “THE RABBIT GOES OUT OF THE HOLE, around the tree, then back in the hole.”

  Connor pulled the rope tight, showing the completed bowline knot. It looked exactly like the illustration in the Field Book.

  Arlo followed Connor’s instructions, looping the rope to make a “tree” and a “hole,” then using the free end of the rope as the “rabbit” to circle out and back in. He pulled on it, but all he got was a tangle.

  “The tree has to grow out of the ground,” explained Connor, demonstrating which side of the loop needed to be on top. Arlo tried it again. This time, it worked. The knot was strong.

  They were prepping for the knot relay, a race between patrols to see who could tie all ten Ranger knots first. Knots were always one of the Alpine Derby stations, so the company spent a lot of time making sure every Ranger knew them.

  Having only just started ropecraeft (“There’s an extra e,” explained Indra. “It’s silent but it’s important.”), Arlo knew he was a liability to Blue Patrol. He was slower than the others at tying the knots, and more likely to mess one up.

  Plus he only knew eight of the ten knots.

  He felt confident with his square knot, taut-line, clove hitch, sheet bend, timber hitch and two half hitches (which was a single knot, despite the name). He hoped he could remember the bowline and the blood knot. But—

  “If he draws a sheepshank or a zeppelin bend, we’re toast,” said Indra.

  The patrols were gathered in their respective corners of the church basement. Some Rangers were stretching their legs for the sprint. Arlo was so worried about his knots that he hadn’t even considered the running part. He imitated their stretches, though he wasn’t quite sure which muscles he wanted looser.

  “Remember, taut-line has two inside the loop, one outside,” said Wu. “And sheet bend goes up, around, then tuck under.”

  “Why is it called a sheet bend?”

  “It’s good for tying sheets together,” explained Indra. “Like if you had to make a rope.”

  Arlo sparked—that was exactly the knot he needed for escaping from his bedroom in the event of a rockslide! He was about to ask what a sheepshank was for when Christian blew the assembly whistle. It was time to line up.

  With six Rangers and ten knots, almost everyone in Blue Patrol would need to go twice. Connor put Arlo at the back of the line. “That way, you’ll only have to go once.” Arlo nodded, relieved.

  He counted Rangers in the other patrols, figuring out who he would be racing against. In Green Patrol, it was a girl named Zaylin. In Red Patrol, it was Russell Stokes. The redheaded brute saw him staring and made wild eyes back at him.

  Senior Patrol would be serving as judges. Each took a station at the far end of the room, with a stack of index cards and a three-foot-long rope at their feet.

  “Rangers ready!” called Christian. “Set! Race!”

  The patrol leaders took the first leg, sprinting across the room to flip a card revealing which knot they had to tie. Patrols cheered as the racers set to work.

  Connor was the first to get a thumbs-up from the judge. He sprinted back and handed off the rope to Indra. They were neck and neck with Red Patrol. Green seemed to be struggling, but Arlo wondered if they had drawn a tougher knot to start.

  As racers returned, they called out what knot they had drawn.

  “Timber hitch,” said Connor.

  “Sheet bend,” said Indra.

  “Clove hitch,” said Wu.

  “Bowline,” said Jonas as he handed off the rope to his sister.

  In the first four legs, Blue had drawn almost all of Arlo’s good knots. Now at the front of the line, Arlo hoped Julie drew a difficult one, saving something simple for him. He watched as she flipped her card, then knelt down to tie a knot around the judge’s ankle.

  “She’s got the taut-line hitch,” said Wu.

  “That means you’re either blood knot, square, sheepshank, or zeppelin,” said Indra. Arlo only knew the first two of those. “What if I can’t do it?”

  “We’re dead,” said Wu.

  Connor took Arlo by the shoulders. “We’re in the lead. Just try to tie it right the first time, even if you have to slow down.”

  Julie got the thumbs-up from the judge and began untying her knot. Arlo felt his pulse quickening with anticipation. Julie was sprinting back. Once the rope hit Arlo’s hand, his feet took over. He found himself in front of the judge, flipping the next card.

  But there wasn’t a word written on it, only a series of squiggles.

  Arlo blinked hard, trying to get his eyes to focus. But the lines on the card didn’t form letters, at least not in any alphabet he had ever seen. While he was staring at it, Russell Stokes arrived at the station next to him. Red Patrol had caught up.

  Arlo turned the card over to show it to the judge.

  “Gajn herodut,” said the judge. The words were completely foreign to him, and felt like they were sung rather than spoken.

  Now doubly confused, Arlo looked at the card again. The squiggles were still just squiggles.

  The knot he knew how to tie best was the square knot. So he tied it. He took both ends of the rope, tying them right over left, left over right. He pulled it tight and showed it to the judge.

  Thumbs-up. Arlo worked the knot open and raced back to his team, handing the rope to Connor for his second run. He had beaten Russell by two seconds at least.

  Wu and Indra gave Arlo high fives as he returned to his place in line. Russell glared over at him. “Emmn sarup. Isthinu talabritic?”

  Arlo could tell by the tone it was an insult, but had no idea what the words actually meant. “Baru sledith,” he answered.

  It felt like his brain had switched to a different language by accident, like when his dad’s computer would show Chinese rather than English. Somehow, the settings in Arlo’s brain had gotten messed up.

  Arlo looked around the room in bemused wonder, noticing all the small details that had changed. Over the door, there was an illuminated green sign. But instead of the word EXIT, it showed a jumble of random shapes. On the far wall was a large poster with the Ranger’s Vow, except the letters were all wrong.

  But they were also familiar. He had seen them before, yet couldn’t
remember where. What’s more, he felt like he might be able to understand the writing if he just squinted his mind a little bit. He started to concentrate, blocking out the sound of the cheering Rangers. He began recognizing repeating patterns in the shapes, and how they formed words. He thought he was close to understanding it when—

  Wu and Indra grabbed him, cheering.

  Jonas had just made it back with the rope. Blue Patrol had won the race, coming in a few seconds ahead of Red. Green was a distant third.

  “So glad you got the square knot,” said Wu.

  “Me too.”

  Arlo looked back over at the Ranger’s Vow on the wall. It was back to being English.

  It was always English, Arlo thought. Whatever had changed wasn’t the poster, but his brain. For a few moments, he had forgotten English altogether. He wondered if this explained why he sometimes had a difficult time reading: Was his brain trying to use the wrong language?

  Which raised the question: What language was it using? Could it have been eldritch? Was that even a language, and if so, why would he know it?

  * * *

  “What’s up? Is this about the sled again? Don’t tell me you built another one.”

  Arlo, Indra and Wu had asked Connor to stay after the meeting. The basement meeting hall was almost empty, just a few Senior Patrol members doing inventory of the quartermaster’s closet.

  “Arlo has something to tell you,” said Indra.

  Suddenly on the spot, Arlo wasn’t sure where to begin. Should he ease into it gently? Hey, so remember when you were a kid and disappeared in the woods? Should he go right to the headlines? Your cousin is alive in another world, but has a different name and doesn’t seem to really care whether you know or not. He decided to split the difference. “I saw your cousin, Katie. This morning before school. And once before that.”

  Arlo watched for a reaction. He saw Connor’s eyes dip, as if pulling up an image in his brain. His lips moved, as if about to form a word. Then his shoulders went back. His head cocked. “Where?”

  “The first time, in a reflection in my room. The second time, on the road coming into town, except it wasn’t the road. It was probably the Long Woods.”

  Connor glanced over to the other Rangers, making sure they couldn’t hear the conversation. One of them was his brother, Christian. “How did you get there?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “How did you get back?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “And you’re sure it was her?”

  “Yes. I talked with her.”

  Connor nodded, thinking. “What did she say her name was now?”

  Arlo hesitated. He was pretty sure this was a test. Connor knew the name; he wanted to make sure Arlo was telling the truth.

  Indra interrupted, pointing at Connor. “How did you know she was alive?”

  Connor ignored her. “What’s her name now?”

  “Rielle,” said Arlo.

  Connor sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Wu, Indra and Arlo exchanged a look, not sure whether this was going well or terribly.

  Connor looked Arlo straight in the eye. “What did she say, exactly?”

  “Not much. We mostly talked about how we were talking. I think she was as surprised as I was.”

  Connor shook his head. “Don’t be so sure. You can’t necessarily trust her.”

  “Back up,” said Wu. “How did you know she was alive and had a new name?”

  “She comes back twice a year to see her parents. Once at Christmas, once at Midsummer. That was the agreement they made.”

  “With who?” asked Wu.

  “The people she lives with now. The eldritch.”

  It took Arlo a few moments for his brain to catch up. This girl he’d assumed was missing wasn’t missing at all. Her family knew exactly where she was. “She said she lives in the Realm.”

  “I don’t know what you call it, but yeah. The place beyond the Long Woods.”

  Indra jumped in. “So when you guys were kids, and the two of you got lost at Highcross…”

  “They only wanted her, so they let me go. I really don’t remember any of it. They wiped my memory or something.” Arlo was inclined to believe him. Connor seemed both confused by exactly what had happened, and resigned to never knowing.

  “Why hasn’t anyone tried to rescue her?” asked Wu.

  “Some people tried at first.” Connor looked over at Arlo. “Like your uncle.”

  “Uncle Wade tried to save her?”

  “You have an uncle?” asked Wu.

  Indra suddenly put it together. “The guy who stuffs animals—that’s your uncle, isn’t it?”

  Arlo nodded, but didn’t want to get off track. “I read that they arrested him for tampering with evidence.”

  “He and some other guy were trying to find us,” said Connor. “But by that point, my family was already talking with the eldritch. They made a deal: Katie would stay and I’d go home. Part of the agreement was that everything would be kept secret.”

  “That’s why you never talk about it,” said Indra.

  “And why you can’t tell anyone. Not your parents, not Jonas and Julie. If anyone ever finds out…” He trailed off. Arlo suspected Connor didn’t know the exact details of the deal, and didn’t want to.

  “Wait, no. Uh-uh.” Wu stepped forward. “Your family handed over your cousin to a bunch of weirdos in another dimension, and we’re supposed to just shut up and not mention it?”

  “She’s better off there, seriously,” Connor said. “It’s like if you had a wolf and you put it in a cage. It could survive, probably, but it doesn’t belong there. It needs to be out in the woods. Katie was always strange, even when she was four. She heard voices. She spoke a different language, wrote a different alphabet.”

  Eldritch, thought Arlo.

  Connor continued. “Back then, they thought there was something wrong with her, but…”

  “She was one of them,” said Indra.

  “No, not really. That’s the thing: she’s not one of them either. They need her for something. She’s special somehow.”

  “Arlo must be special, too,” said Wu.

  Indra agreed. “That’s why the wisps showed up at the campout. Whoever sent them was after Arlo.”

  Arlo felt his stomach tying in knots. He was back to the final question he had written on the laundry room window: Why me? “If I’m special, then why would someone try to kill me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Connor. “Maybe they think you’re a threat.”

  19

  TWO DINNERS AND A SNACK

  ARLO SPENT THE NEXT FEW WEEKS waiting for something terrible to happen. He knew he had to be vigilant, because someone, somewhere wanted him dead.

  Every morning, he would wake up before his alarm, staring at the ceiling while he contemplated how it might happen.

  He was pretty sure they wouldn’t send wisps again. Indra made a list of other supernatural creatures she thought might be assigned to kill him, ranging from flying wolves to shadow snakes to ear spiders. After a look through Culman’s Bestiary, he started sleeping with a cotton ball in each ear, just to be safe. He wasn’t sure that would actually stop a swarm of hungry ear spiders, but it might slow them down on the way to eating his brain.

  Using the knots he’d learned, Arlo fashioned a rope long enough to stretch from his window to the ground. He stored it in the bottom desk drawer and practiced quickly attaching it to the radiator. He figured he could get out in less than twenty seconds if he had to.

  But one morning as he stared at the ceiling, Arlo realized how unlikely it was that a creature would be sent to murder him in his home. Like the disappearance of Connor and Katie, a mysterious death would be too remarkable, too newsworthy.

  Indra agreed. “Whoever is trying to kill you wants to do it quietly. That’s why they sent the wisps the first time. It would have looked like an accident. Like you stumbled into an old hunting trap.”
/>   They discussed the various possibilities around the campfire, sitting on benches made of packed snow. Jonas and Julie were away for their grandfather’s funeral in Tucson, so the four remaining patrol members could talk openly.

  This was the last campout before the Alpine Derby, and Connor had been extra careful when placing the wards around Blue Patrol’s campsite. Wu and Indra vowed to never leave Arlo alone in the woods where he could be snatched or eaten. Not that they thought it likely.

  “If I was trying to kill you, I’d do it from the inside,” said Wu. “I’d get one of your friends or family to do it.”

  “Maybe use a hex,” suggested Connor. “Any witch could do that. Plus there are toads that have mind control.”

  “If you’re going to do that, why not just use a doppelgänger?” Indra explained that a doppelgänger was a faceless shape-shifter who could assume the identity of any person. “For all you know, one of us could be a doppelgänger, just waiting for you to fall asleep so we can smother you.” Reading his reaction, Indra quickly added, “We’re not, though. We’re on your side.”

  “Definitely,” said Wu.

  “One hundred percent.”

  Arlo believed them. Plus he was pretty sure who the doppelgänger might be.

  Jaycee had begun acting very strangely. Arlo had seen her smiling for no reason while drying the dishes, a dreamy look in her eyes. She said thank you when Uncle Wade passed the macaroni and cheese, even while their mom was out of the room and couldn’t hear it. She took long showers, shaved her legs and began wrapping her head in a towel like they do in movies.

  Once, Arlo swore he heard her humming.

  This was not his sister. Arlo was pretty sure it was a doppelgänger attempting to act like a “normal” teenager, not realizing that the real Jaycee was incredibly moody and cold, so grumpy she would scoff at rainbows and look away.

  At the very minimum, Jaycee was hexed or being controlled by a supernatural toad.

  A few days after the campout, Arlo found his sister using the telephone, the old-fashioned one in the kitchen. True, the snow was too deep to hike out to Signal Rock, but it seemed very unlikely that Jaycee would consent to using Uncle Wade’s weird wired phone that smelled like burning plastic. But there she was, sitting on the counter, twisting the cord around her finger as she talked.