Mrs. Smith glanced back at the other neighbors with a smile. “I haven’t had one of those in years.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any Butter Crunch Bars?” Nick’s mother chimed in. “They don’t seem to carry those down at the market anymore.”
Nick thought this was getting stranger by the minute. Now would the bald man open up his freezer box and pull out anything anybody wanted? Ice cream treats that hadn’t been made for twenty years? Nick had seen this story before on The Twilight Zone.
The man in white pulled open the freezer compartment and looked inside. Bright light poured from within. Steam formed where the cold hit the humid summer air.
“Sorry,” he said as he turned back to the neighbors. “All I’ve got is vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate. Well, I might have a couple of orange Popsicles in here somewhere.” He shrugged apologetically. “There wasn’t much time, I’m afraid.”
“What kind of ice cream truck is this?” Mr. Furlong complained. “Well, actually, this isn’t a truck—” the man in white began.
“Hey!” Furlong’s son, Bobby, yelled as his friend Jason Dafoe pushed him. “Get back in line, you scuz!” Bobby punched Jason’s arm. Jason giggled as Bobby grabbed for his glasses. Bobby took a step forward, Jason a step back, as if they might chase each other around the circle. The two of them were only three or four years younger than Nick, but they both acted like little kids.
“Look,” Mr. Furlong insisted, “we’ll take whatever you’ve got.”
“That’s just like you, Leo,” Mrs. Furlong called out from where she stood behind him, ready at last to begin the battle. “You never think for a minute about what I really want.”
Nick’s mother had told him the Furlongs had been married for twenty-seven years. Nick sometimes wondered how they could have stayed married for twenty-seven minutes.
The ice cream man quickly distributed the bars to anyone who held out his hand. Even Mary Lou’s parents came forward from where they had hung back silently.
“How much are these?” Mr. Mills asked.
“Oh,” the bald man said with a start, “you mean money. Oh, dear, no, I couldn’t. This isn’t about money. I’m more of a—” He paused and frowned. “Oh, yes,” he added as he smiled again. “That’s what I am. A welcome wagon.”
“What?” Nick’s mother asked as she took a bite into her bar. “What do you mean? This is our street, we live here already. You must have that wrong.” She paused to look at the ice cream. “You know, this tastes a little bit like that Butter Crunch Bar.”
“Sort of like a Nutty Buddy, too,” Furlong agreed as he chewed.
“Well, it is your street,” the ice cream man said. He took a deep breath before he continued. “But something—well—I’m afraid that’s what I’ve come to tell you about. When it gets light out here again, you’ll see that things have changed.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Mills asked. “Because of the storm?”
“The storm? Oh, goodness, no. That was only a distraction, you see.” The ice cream man grimaced. “I’m afraid I’m not explaining this very well.”
Lightning streaked across the sky. Oddly enough, no thunder followed.
“Oh, no.” The ice cream man studied the sky. “I had expected more time—you’ll have to forgive me, but I can be found much too easily. That wouldn’t be good, just yet. You’ll be safer if I leave now, at least for tonight. I’ll talk to you as soon as I can. Until then, well—remember, I was here first. And try to stay together. Whatever happens, please be ready.”
He held up his hand, perhaps to wave to all the residents of Chestnut Circle, or maybe to stop all the questions that were pouring out of the adults. What Nick saw certainly stopped him, for, in the shadowed part of the ice cream man’s hand, he could see the stars.
“Believe it or not,” he called as if he was already very far away, “we’re all in this together!”
The man in white was gone. No, he hadn’t pedaled away, or even turned. He had simply vanished.
Mr. Furlong dropped his half-eaten ice cream bar on the street. “I’m going home!” he announced.
Somehow, Nick thought, home wasn’t the safe place it had been a few hours before.
Around the Circle #1:
A Visit with Nunn
Nunn didn’t trust a soul. Those without souls, however, were a different matter.
The flash of crimson light seemed to agree.
It was there, waiting for him, when he opened the door to this, the most inner room of the place that he had built with his magic, half castle and half maze. But then the light faded, and all went back to darkness, as it was meant to be, safe from sunlight, and from spells other than his own.
The magician moved quickly into the lightless room. Nunn did not need to see his surroundings, at least in any ordinary way. Everything was stored quite carefully here, and anything that moved knew enough to stay out of his path. He paused at the room’s center and clapped once, then twice more. A single point of light spread before him, and an image coalesced within: an elderly man in white giving handouts to the newcomers.
Nunn made a noise deep in his throat. “So quick,” he whispered as he turned away from the image of his brother wizard. “How do you suppose he might have gotten warning?”
The air flashed red for an instant by his right shoulder.
Nunn rubbed at the single, deep furrow that ran across his forehead. “What do you mean? How could he have found out about the calling before I did?”
Another, longer flash of red lit the crowded workroom, a flash long enough to see the shape of the thing that made it, a shape that was almost human.
“Enough!” Nunn announced, his words increasingly angry. “This is no time for amusement.”
The red light shifted to blue and then to green, as if it might entertain itself despite the wizard. Nunn reached out quickly with the flat of his hand, slashing across the illumination.
The green light screamed.
The magician withdrew his hand. His fingers tingled where he had made contact.
“Much better,” the wizard added. “It pleases me so much when you choose to verbalize.”
The green light shifted again and gained substance, defining itself into a small creature covered by fine hair. The light faded further as the hair turned brown, so that the creature might be mistaken for a large monkey or a small chimpanzee, unless one looked at the eyes. They still glowed with the same unnatural light.
The creature managed a ragged breath. “When you call me so abruptly,” it spoke in a thin, high, and quite unpleasant voice, “it tears me up inside.”
“So I’ll put you back together,” Nunn remarked dismissively. “It’s not as if you could exist without me.”
“One can dream,” the monkey-thing replied with what looked like the beginning of a smile.
Nunn raised his hand to strike.
“Only using my wit!” the creature cried defensively. “You remember that! You’re the one who gave it to me.”
Nunn curled his fingers into a fist. The monkey was right. It was nothing more than what Nunn had created.
The monkey cowered, its eyes on the wizard’s hand. Nunn half considered tearing the construct apart. It would be a satisfying bit of destruction. It would also be far too wasteful. Building it had been hard, intricate work. There were bound to be flaws. And every time he chose to tinker with this creation, he risked losing more of the energy he had bound inside the thing, until someday all that power would leak away and return to where it had come from. Nunn couldn’t allow that, especially now. The monkey might not be an ideal vessel, but it would do. The Circle had begun, and even this creature was a part of it.
The monkey peered over Nunn’s shoulder. “So Obar got to them before you?” The creature made a clicking noise with its tongue. “Such a generous soul.”
Nunn spun about to look back at the glowing image. “Not for long,” he replied after a moment’s pause. “It’s time f
or you to get to work.”
The creature ambled over to the edge of the image and smiled. “No killing,” Nunn added quickly.
The monkey’s smile vanished. Its eyes seemed to glow with disappointment.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity for that later,” Nunn continued. “I’m sure that most of them are quite expendable. But we have to test them first.”
The monkey’s smile returned.
“Nunn,” the creature said. “You’re so good to me.” The thing vanished to do its work.
Two
“My lawn! What have they done to my lawn?”
The voice woke Nick up, but he didn’t open his eyes until the pounding began.
“Joan!” another man’s voice called. “I think you and Nick should come on out here!”
At first, Nick thought the second voice belonged to his father. The thought brought him fully awake.
He forced himself to sit up. Why would it be his father? What did his father care about them anymore?
“Joan! Nick! Are you in there?”
No, certainly not his father. By the end of the second sentence, he knew that the voice belonged to Mr. Mills. He heard other voices, shouting somewhere down the street. It was quite a commotion for first thing in the morning.
If it was first thing in the morning. Nick noticed his clock radio still wasn’t working; the dial seemed permanently stuck at 6:07. That meant the city hadn’t gotten around to fixing the electricity. He glanced over at the bookshelf by the bed to that spot where he usually left his watch. There it was, and it was still ticking. Good old, cheap, wind-up watches; except that the face of this watch read 3:14. Either the sun was up awfully early or he had slept awfully late. Nick shook his head. Maybe his good old, cheap, wind-up watch had stopped for a while during the storm.
He heard the, door open downstairs, and his mother’s voice, speaking words he couldn’t quite catch. He climbed out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. He checked himself out in the full-length mirror on the back of his closet door. Not bad for a scrawny seventeen-year-old, he supposed; no new zits, and he hadn’t sprouted fangs in his sleep.
He frowned. His hair looked different; even redder than usual this morning, almost like it was on fire. It must have something to do with the light. The sun lit the still-closed shade in such a way that the pale paper seemed to glow with a pinkish tinge. He glanced back at his reflection. The only time he’d ever seen his hair look like this was in those old snapshots his father used to take. It was like the mirror was showing his hair in Kodachrome.
“Nick!” That was his mother’s voice. “Come on down here, honey!”
Nick sighed. He’d regard his flaming locks some other time. He wanted to know what was going on. He swung his door open, crossed the upstairs hall, and took the stairs two at a time.
His mother waited at the bottom. She had her arms folded in front of her, a position that made her look short and imposing at the same time. He could tell from her expression that whatever was happening, it wasn’t going to be fun.
“Hi, Nick,” Mr. Mills said quietly when Nick reached his mother. Mills stood on the front walkway, just beyond the open door. He wasn’t smiling the way he usually did when he visited. And his straight, almost gym-teacher-like posture looked definitely rigid.
Nick forgot to say hello back when he saw what was outside, past the vice-principal.
First off, the sky was green; well, more of an aqua. But definitely not blue. And all the colors beneath the sky were wrong, too. Nick thought again about his hair in those snapshots. The entire world looked like that now; like one of those pictures that hadn’t been developed quite right. He went to the door, then stood and stared for a minute. Mr. Mills cleared his throat. Nick’s mother didn’t say a word.
“What’s going on?” Nick asked when he found his voice.
“We don’t know,” Mills replied. He tried to smile reassuringly. Teachers could always smile reassuringly. Somehow, today, Mr. Mills’ smile didn’t work.
“Something’s changed,” Mills added after a moment. “Chestnut Circle is still here, but—well, it doesn’t seem to lead into Oak Street.”
Nick laughed at that, a quick, braying sound, louder than he’d meant it to be. What was Mr. Mills talking about? Nick tried to think of another question, something that would sound intelligent. Nothing came to mind. He decided he had to see for himself. He stepped outside.
“Something’s changed”? That was all Mr. Mills could say? Nick felt the way he had when his first dog died and all the adults kept talking about his pet “passing away.” It was more like everything had changed; like their corner of the world had gone crazy.
The sky had a green tint to it, and the sun was the kind of red you got at the end of a day in fall, except now that red sun was almost directly overhead. The houses around Chestnut Circle looked different, too, partially from the weird shift of colors. But some of the houses also had great strands of dark ivy crawling up their sides where there had been nothing but boards or brick the night before.
And there was more. At the far end of the circle, out where Oak Street used to be, but also in those spaces where he could see between houses, out beyond every yard, there was a forest made up of hundreds of thick, tall, dark trees; trees that plunged everything beneath them into shadow, so that the little clearing of Chestnut Circle was the only real point of light.
“My lawn!” that same voice yelled from down the street. “I’ll call the city about this!”
Nick saw Mr. Sayre wildly waving his hands over his head. Sayre hadn’t been out last night with the ice cream truck. It had probably taken his lawn to bring him out in the daylight. The only time Nick ever saw Mr. Sayre was when he was out working on his yard. Now, though, his manicured grass had turned a sickly blue, and a full quarter of his front lawn had been taken over by that same dark, thick ivy that attacked his house.
Sayre turned and glared straight at Nick, happy at last, Nick guessed, that there was somebody outside that he could yell at. “I’ll call the city, I tell you!”
Nick had a feeling, even if the phones worked, that there would no longer be a city to call.
“What should we do?” Nick’s mother asked from the doorway to the house.
“I think it’s best if we get everybody together,” Mr. Mills replied. “We all know each other here in the neighborhood, at least a little bit. We certainly know each other better than we know what’s happened around here.”
“That sounds good,” his mother replied with a curt nod as she unfolded her arms. “Besides, I’m really worried about Constance Smith.”
Mills nodded back. “Joan, if you can get Constance, and Nick goes next door and tells the Dafoes? The Jacksons, too.” He turned to look out across the yard. “Why don’t we meet in front of your house? I’ll go up to the top of the circle and get the Furlongs. Maybe I’ll even be able to talk some sense into old Sayre.”
Both Mills and his mother started walking before Nick could say a thing. Not that he minded talking to the Dafoes. Heck, there might even be a chance that Mary Lou would answer the door. But the Jacksons? If Todd Jackson made Nick’s skin crawl, talking to Todd’s father made Nick’s skin want to jump off his body. Todd would threaten you if you smiled at him the wrong way. Smile at Todd’s father, and Mr. Jackson would start swinging.
Still, Nick supposed it was better than having to talk to crazy old Sayre, who was still out there screaming about his lawn. He had a job to do. He should get it over with.
He trotted over to the Dafoes’ house. The door opened before he could knock. Mary Lou’s little brother, Jason, stared up at him through his thick glasses.
“Jeez, Nick,” Jason said, his voice cracking with excitement. “What’s going on out there? Look at the colors, would you? Is it something about the hurricane?”
That was the longest speech Nick had ever heard from the fourteen- year-old. When Jason hung around with Bobby Furlong, Bobby did enou
gh talking for both of them.
“Well, is it?” Jason insisted. He looked strange in this new light too. His blond hair was almost white; his fair skin flushed a too-bright shade of pink.
“No,” Nick remembered to answer. “I think it’s something worse.”
“Jason dear?” Mrs. Dafoe’s voice came from somewhere deep inside the house. “Is that somebody at the door?” There was something about the way Mrs. Dafoe phrased things that sounded almost too polite.
“It’s Nick from next door!” Jason called.
“Why, how nice to see you, Nick,” Mrs. Dafoe said as she emerged from the kitchen. She looked like she would on any other day, her clothes perfectly ironed, her hair perfectly in place. “What can we do for you today?”
What can you do? It’s the end of the world, is what he thought. What he said was, “Mr. Mills thinks there’s something wrong. He wants everyone in the neighborhood to get together and talk about it.”
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Dafoe replied, allowing herself the slightest of frowns. “I guess we could do that. Thank you, Nick. I’ll get the rest of the family.”
Nick thanked her back and ran to the next house.
“I see you!” Mr. Sayre yelled at his back. “Turn around when I’m talking to you! I want some answers!”
Nick banged on the Jacksons’ door instead.
The door opened with such force that it slammed against the inside wall.
“What do you want?” Todd’s old man demanded. He lurched forward into the doorway, squinting at the sunlight. Even though it was still the first thing in the morning (probably), he had a beer in his hand. “This better be fuckin’ good.”
Nick stumbled back down the steps, careful to keep out of arm’s reach. The man stared over Nick’s head, although it didn’t look like his eyes were particularly focused. He also looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His rumpled clothing appeared to have been on his body just as long.
Nick looked to either side, ready to escape if Jackson made another move. “M-Mr. Mills,” he stuttered. “He thinks something’s going—”
Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Page 2
