Meeting (23 page)

“Close the door,” said the man. He set the tea tray next to the crystal ball and sat in the chair on the far side of the table.

Maya turned the doorknob. It moved freely. Not locked. She pulled the door shut—all the store noise of conversation vanished—and sat in the second chair.

“I’m Weyland,” said the man. He poured two cups of tea and held one out to her. They weren’t regular teacups, more like small earthenware mugs.

“Thank you.” Maya accepted the cup and sniffed the tea. Mint and lime and hickory smoke. She set the cup on the velvet and looked at Weyland.

“And you are not Bikos,” he said.

Should she tell him her name? She hesitated, then said, “No. Sorry. I’m Maya.”

“Peter’s sister.”

“Yeah.”

“Travis’s best friend.”

“His
best
friend?”

“He hasn’t said that, but I infer it. He mentioned you often before he became too busy to stop in after school. Did Bikos—”

Maya shook her head and looked away.

“I wish I could have helped him more. The medicine I know did not work on him.” Weyland drank tea and poured himself a second cup. “He found a way for his friend to survive without him, yes?”

Rimi dropped a tentacle into the teacup and sampled Dragon’s Fire tea. The smoky taste flowed across Maya’s tongue. She swallowed, then said, “What did you say to him?”

He smiled sadly at her. Maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to look into his eyes before: not because they were alien, but because he was so sad, and Maya had been feeling enough of her own sad she hadn’t wanted anybody else’s. He said, “I had a friend once whom I wanted to save, and I gave her to the wrong people, thinking they would help her, but they hurt her instead.”

“Why did Bikos even ever talk to you about any of this?”

“I gave him shelter here for a few days, and I fed him, though the food didn’t do him much good. I take in strays when they let me. He had a terrible dilemma. Maya, we don’t know each other at all, but I see—” He paused. He stroked a hand over the crystal ball. Something glimmered in its center. “You have saved his friend. The people who left him here would have hurt her, even if Bikos had lived. Even now, they are trying to find her. She is wearing a little red feather that glows like a beacon telling them where she is.”

“She is?”
Oh, no! Is this the red thorn?

“How can we get rid of it?” Maya asked.

“I don’t think my medicine will work on that, either, but—” He opened a drawer in the table and rummaged, then held up a little silver pendant shaped like a lifted hand, fingers up and palm facing out. “Here.” He held it out to her.

Rimi.
Maya opened her hand.

Rimi reached ahead of her, lifting the pendant. It floated above Weyland’s hand.
I
fenshu
it. It tastes—

Maya tasted warm, buttered bread. And then a sliver of ice.

I love this! Inside is one thing, and outside, another!
Rimi thought.

“If you wear it, it will dim the red feather.” He rummaged in the drawer again and came up with a silver chain. He held it up, and Rimi took it from him and threaded it through the pendant’s loop. Weyland didn’t seem to find anything strange about a pendant floating in the air, or a chain snaking through the air to join it.

Rimi brought the pendant to Maya, who caught it in her hand and studied it. The silver hand was detailed and beautiful, and it had six fingers.
Is it safe?
she wondered.

Yes
, Rimi thought.
Yes, please, yes. I will put it on you.

Maya blew out a breath and lifted her hair away from her neck. Rimi fastened the chain. The pendant slid inside Maya’s shirt collar to lie at the top of her sternum.

Weyland nodded once. “Yes. The glow subsides.”

“Thank you,” Maya said. “Do I—do you want—I didn’t get my allowance yet this week—”

“No payment, Maya, except perhaps you help someone else.” He rose. “You are a girl of many secrets. Will you keep mine?”

“I—” Columba had sent her here to learn about Weyland and the store. What was she going to tell her new mentor?

Her first chance to say no, she guessed. “I’ll do my best.”

He held out his hand, and she clasped it. His grip was warm, strong, and gentle. Rimi wrapped around his hand, too, and he smiled.

“Can I show them sketches of the store?” she asked when he released her.

“Oh, yes.”

“They can’t see in, you know,” she said, and then she wondered if he knew she was talking about the Janus House people.

He seemed to. He smiled even wider. “I wanted to delay their knowledge of me as long as I could, but they’re alert now, and I’ll have to find another way to hide what’s truly important from them. Maya. If you need to talk to someone outside the system—” He moved past her and opened the door, and the room filled with the noise of other people again. “I’ll be here.”

“Thank you,” she said again. She pressed her hand over the new pendant, which was warm against her skin. “Thank you.”

 

 

 

Music Night the night before Halloween started out differently. Maya was unfolding chairs and setting them around the living room when Great-uncle Harper came up the porch steps, flanked by Sarutha and Noona. Mom and Dad met them at the door, then looked beyond for the usual crowd. Maya paused, too, and looked. No one followed the Elders.

“Mrs. Andersen, Mr. Andersen, we need to talk,” Great-uncle Harper said. “It’s getting too cold to sit outside.”

“I’d been thinking that myself,” said Dad. “We’ve been trying to heat the whole outdoors, but it hasn’t worked. We don’t want people getting sick just to sing.”

“Nor do we,” said Great-uncle Harper. “We were thinking we might come in more manageable numbers until it gets warm again. We’ll take turns joining you.”

“I’m sure we’ll miss those who can’t make it,” Mom said, “but it might work better that way. Unless you folks have a big room somewhere in Janus House we could all fit in.”

“We have some large rooms, but none large enough for that,” said Harper.

Maya thought of two rooms big enough without even trying: the portal room and the central courtyard where the Janus House people had held an interportal council with lots of aliens right after Maya had first acquired Rimi. Couldn’t let the family see either of those places, she guessed.

“Are you the only ones coming tonight?” Mom asked Harper.

Sarutha said, “No. We are the delegation to check with you to see whether you are all right with the change of plans.”

“Sure,” said Mom.

“I will go back and fetch tonight’s contingent,” said Noona, peeling off.

Mom and Dad stood back. “Please come in,” Dad said to Harper and Sarutha.

“There was one other thing,” Harper said

“How can we help you?” Dad asked.

“Halloween,” said Harper.

“What about it?”

“Maya invited some of our youngsters to go out and terrorize the neighbors. We don’t do that.”

“What?” Mom said.

“He’s talking about trick-or-treating, Mom,” Maya said.

Just then, Peter came down the stairs wearing his fox head, which was one of the best masks Mom had ever made: a broad red face, with a long red snout with black whiskers and a black nose on the end, upstanding black ears with tufts of pale fur inside, a white chin, and shiny yellow eyes.

Harper startled, though Sarutha smiled. “What is that?” Harper demanded.

“That’s Peter,” said Mom.

“It’s part of my costume, Mr. Harper,” Peter said, his voice muffled behind the mask.

“Why are the children dressing up as something they’re not?” Harper asked.

“It’s just play, Mr. Harper,” Mom said. “I don’t think there’s any harm in it.”

Harper looked stern. Maya’s grip tightened on the back of the folding chair she had just put in place. What if he cast some kind of spell?

Sarutha poked him in the side. “Play, Harper. Play.”

“I don’t like it,” Harper said.

Dad said, “Well, we wouldn’t presume to tell other parents how to raise their children. If it troubles you that much, I’m sure your children can stay home.”

Sarutha poked Harper again. He brushed her hand aside and said, “No, no. I’m sure the children will survive it. I just worry. Excuse me.” He turned and went out to stand on the edge of the porch. He waved a hand toward Janus House, and then the usual flood of chattering happy people carrying instruments and refreshments materialized, except there were half the usual number.

They all fit inside the Andersen house, without even bumping elbows the way they usually did. With the doors and windows shut, they sounded even better and more concentrated than they had before.

Benjamin, Gwenda, and Rowan didn’t come.

Maya went outside
to collect her armor Sunday afternoon. She and her mother had set the cut-out cardboard pieces, stiffened and curved appropriately with the aid of papier-mâché, on newspapers on the porch Saturday afternoon and sprayed them with a lot of silver paint. They had dried well, without too many drips, and they looked pretty darned good, Maya thought. Breastplate, backplate, shield, and greaves/shin guards.

She grabbed the shield—which she had made out of six cardboard rounds Superglued to each other to stiffen it, with luggage straps stapled on the back for her arm to slide through—and the breastplate. At the kitchen table, she got out a fat black Sharpie and drew a Medusa head on the shield, with lots of snakes for hair. Somehow, Medusa’s face ended up looking like Stephanie’s, not glaring like a monster, but smiling, as though she liked having such active hair.

On the breastplate, Maya drew some fancy curlicues like the ones she’d seen in pictures of Greek soldiers.

Her mother came in. “Nice,” she said. She held up the tunic she had made from one of the sheets. Instead of falling full length, it was a short tunic, going to mid-thigh. “Black jeans under it? It’s supposed to be cold tonight.”

“Yeah. I can tie the greaves on over my jeans. I’ve got to go borrow the helmet.” Rimi said Maya had the correct confluences for attachment on the back of her neck. Maya and Rimi had tried various helmets based on the pictures they’d studied, which showed some crazy headgear. Rimi liked one that showed the helmet as a monster’s head with a wide mouth open around Maya’s face, as though the monster had just bitten down on Maya’s head and hadn’t started chewing yet. Ultimately, they chose an Athena helmet, because Athena often wore her helmet pushed up on her head. Maya ended up having another face above her own.

Candra came in, heading for the refrigerator. She stopped and studied Maya’s armor. “Cool, little sister.”

Mom said, “What kind of loot bag are you going to carry? Anything normal will make the outfit look ridiculous.”

“Loot bag. I
knew
I forgot something!”

“I know,” said Candra. “I’ve got that old black messenger bag. You could take that. Are you going to have a sword?”

“A sword,” Maya said. “D’oh!”

“Probably better if you don’t. It’ll just get in the way.”

“Most of the guys on vases had javelins, anyway.”

“Who do you imagine you’re fighting?” Candra asked.

“Nobody, really.”
Everybody who wants to lock us into doing or being something we don’t want.
“We just want to look excellent.”

“What is this ‘we’?” asked Candra.

Maya hesitated. “Me and my shadow.”

“Cryptic!” Candra said.

 

 

 

Maya put on her costume around five thirty. The cardboard parts were a little tricky, but the helmet took the longest, even though they had practiced after lights-out the night before.

I’m staring at the ceiling
, Rimi thought.

“Maybe you can tilt forward a little. Reshape the face.” Maya studied the helmet in the mirror. It had a domed top, with a little owl perching on it. Blank eye holes stared upward, and there was a nasal piece, and a mouth—none of the pictures they looked at had mouths, but the whole point was so Rimi could talk if she wanted to, so they had changed the design.

Maya tried shifting the helmet forward. It was not hollow inside, but filled with Rimi stuff. More dense than a scarf, but light, and infinitely adjustable. Rimi shifted her mass to the new angle.

“You don’t actually need to look out the eyeholes, do you?” Maya asked. Rimi saw everything, and she didn’t usually have eyes.

Just wanted to try it. I’m pretending I have a head tonight. This is a little better. Plus, I can use the owl’s eyes.
The owl’s eyes glowed golden. One of them winked.

“Do we make sense together?” Maya spread her arms and looked at her costume. She was in black and silver, with the dark blue starry tunic in between. The silver helmet made her head look strange and large, but it wasn’t a bad look.

Maya went to her dresser and looked at the pictures of Stephanie. She ran her finger through the little bowl of raw garnets she and Stephanie had collected in a creek in northern Idaho, back when they went hiking with their families on a regular basis. She picked out the biggest one and slipped it into her jeans change pocket.

Someone knocked on the door. Before she could say “wait,” a fox walked in. It had a cream chest and belly, but the rest of it was red fur, except for black hands and feet and the tip of its tail. Its tail was bushy and beautiful.

“I hate when you do that,” Maya said.

“I know,” said Peter, muffled through the fox’s head, “but I keep forgetting.”