MORTAL COILS (22 page)

Fiona
looked at Eliot. “I think we have to,” she said.

He
nodded.

Together
they followed Uncle Henry.

He
led them through a study filled with stuffed trophy animals: Kodiak bear, a
lion, a dodo, and mammoth tusks—into a glass-walled atrium where they crunched
over a Zen gravel stream—then they passed into Uncle Henry’s library.

It
was three stories tall with wrought-iron balconies, wall after wall of books,
rolling ladders of brass, and covered catwalks. It stretched into the distance;
it must have had millions of volumes. Fiona smelled the paper, and the leather,
and the scent of age. Like home. She could have spent a decade exploring the
place.

Uncle
Henry didn’t let them dawdle, though; he ushered them through a short hallway
that hissed with a pressure change, then outside to a walkway—where they halted
before a cliff.

Wind
whipped through Fiona’s hair, blinding her. She tied it up in a knot and saw
what Uncle Henry steered them toward: a slender stone bridge that arched over
churning waters to an island.

As
they got closer, she saw a railing on this bridge, broken in places, and far
too short to stop one who stumbled.

“Is
that what you meant?” she said, struggling to project her voice over the wind.
“That bridge . . . is that the test?”

“Oh,
no, child,” Uncle Henry told her. “If you do not have the pertinacity to cross
that, then you do not possess a tenth the backbone required to face the
family.”

He
waved his hand, indicating that they cross . . . or not. He was giving them the
choice.

Fiona
looked to Eliot and he took her hand, knowing four feet on the bridge would be
more stable than two. They implicitly understood that while this violated their
brother-sister agreement never to touch, neither would ever speak of it.

Together,
she and Eliot stepped onto cracked, unmortared stones. Wind gusted about her,
so she bent her knees and took tiny shuffling steps. The span hummed under her
feet, resonating in the unstable currents of air.

Fiona
tried to look at her feet—which should have been easy; that’s what she looked
at all day at Ringo’s—but she couldn’t help looking at the jagged rocks and
roiling waters below. Salt spray stung her eyes. She blinked away tears and
kept going. She had to. If she stopped, Eliot would know she was chicken. That
had to be avoided at all costs.

Eyes
on feet, she kept moving.

Without
warning the ancient stones of the bridge vanished, and she stepped onto dark
sand.

She
and Eliot simultaneously dropped each other’s hand.

“See?”
Uncle Henry skipped off the bridge behind them. “Nothing to it.”

“Yeah,”
Eliot whispered. “It was easy.”

Fiona
shot him a glare for that lie.

“This
way.” Uncle Henry led them into an amphitheater.

The
wind ceased inside, and Fiona felt as if she were inside a fishbowl.
Grandmother sat on the innermost step opposite four others: three men and
another woman. Grandmother blinked at Fiona and Eliot, inscrutable and rigid.

“Allow
me to introduce Miss Fiona Post and Mr. Eliot Post,” Uncle Henry said to the
strangers. “Eliot, Fiona, these are”—he sighed—“I will drop all the confusing
‘great this’ and ‘twice removed thats’ if you don’t mind.”

He
stepped before the woman. She was beautiful, like a model or an actress, and
her smile made Fiona feel completely at ease . . . and at the same time wary.

“This
is your aunt Lucia.”

Aunt
meant that she was her mother’s sister? Had her mother been this lovely? Was it
even remotely possible that Fiona could look so pretty when she grew up?

Uncle
Henry next indicated the man with gold beard and wavy hair. He wore jeans,
sneakers, and a short-sleeved, white shirt. He smiled at them.

“Your
cousin Gilbert.”

“Charmed,”
Gilbert said.

“Next
. . .” Uncle Henry turned to a dour man who sat with his elbows on his knees.
He stared at both Fiona and Eliot as if they were bacterio-logical specimens
under a microscope. His drooping mustache reminded Fiona of pictures she had
seen of Mongol warriors sweeping over Asia killing everything that resisted
them.

“Your
uncle Aaron,” Henry said.

Henry
then turned to an old man, sitting cross-legged behind this Uncle Aaron. He had
notes and charts scattered about him. His eyes sparkled.

“Uncle
Cornelius,” Henry said.

“We’re
very pleased to meet you all,” Fiona said.

That
had to be the most brainless thing she had ever said. She wasn’t pleased to be
here, or to meet any of them. She should have demanded to know what they wanted.
She glanced at Grandmother, who nodded. At least Fiona had managed to say
something.

Aunt
Lucia stood and her black dress flowed about her. The fabric’s red-rose pattern
was the same color as her lips and hair. Fiona in her gray sweats and oily, knotted
hair felt awkward standing before such a sophisticated woman. How wretched must
she look to all these people?

“You
have had a long trip,” Lucia said. “You must be tired, but please indulge us by
answering a few questions.”

Fiona
straightened. She and Eliot were good at answering questions. If this was what
Uncle Henry meant by a “test,” then she knew everything would be all right.
They’d been answering Grandmother’s questions as long as she could remember.

Fiona
glanced at Eliot and he nodded.

“We’re
ready,” she told Lucia. “Go ahead and ask.”

“I
will go first,” Uncle Cornelius said. He held a notebook and readied his pencil
to write. “Favorite colors?”

Fiona
wasn’t ready for that question. She’d been expecting something like “What is
the capital of Madagascar?” No one had ever asked what colors she liked.

“Purple,”
she blurted.

That
was the first thing that popped into her head. Not lavender, but the black
purple that was the color of the dusk or the earliest dawn. It was dark and
deep and somehow sad.

Eliot’s
brow wrinkled with concentration. “Gray.”

Cornelius
scribbled this down and then consulted his charts.

Uncle
Henry sat forward and asked, “When I am closed, I am a triangle. Open, a
circle. What am I?”

Fiona
loved riddles. Eliot and she had done them all when they were kids. They’d
exhausted every riddle in their library and solved the ones Grandmother and
Cecilia knew, too. That’s why they had eventually moved on to vocabulary insult
for a challenge.

“An
umbrella,” she and Eliot said together.

“But
technically,” Eliot added, “closed, you’re a cone.”

“And
a hemisphere when opened,” Fiona said.

Uncle
Henry beamed and turned to Cornelius. “Note the multidimensional abstraction.”

“Yes,”
Uncle Cornelius muttered, and scratched out several mathematical equations.

Aaron
snorted and asked, “How many squares on a chessboard?”

Fiona
knew a chessboard had sixty-four squares: eight by eight alternating black and
white spaces. But it also had squares made up of combinations such as
two-by-two or three-by-three blocks.

“Start
with the bigger blocks,” Eliot whispered to her.

Fiona
bristled—not because it was a bad suggestion, but because he was right: it was
easier that way.

“There’s
a pattern,” she told Eliot.

“Just
saw it.” Now it was Eliot’s turn to look annoyed because she’d figured it out
first. “One, four, nine . . .”

“The
square of the numbers,” she told him, “ending with eight squared, or sixty-four
singles. Adding it all up you get—”

“Two
hundred four,” they told Uncle Aaron together.

He
nodded and no longer glared at them like bacteriological specimens.

Cornelius
glanced up from his notes. “My calculations continue to balance. An equivalent
probability of genetic options.”

Aunt
Lucia hissed a long sigh. “Oedipus answered the Sphinx’s riddles, but that
never proved a thing about his lineage, either. The children are intelligent, I
grant you that . . . but anyone can be merely smart.”

Fiona
became annoyed, wondering how anyone could be “merely” smart.

Lucia
continued, “Are we not looking for a spark of the transcendent?” Her jaw set.
“We can take no chances with what might determine the fate of our entire
family.”

The
others were silent, and Fiona heard her own heartbeat. Something important was
about to be decided against them . . . even though she and Eliot hadn’t failed
any of their tests.

“There
is an obvious alternative to words.” Henry reached into his pocket and pulled
out a pair of dice. They were red with white spots and gleamed like rubies.

The
sight of them gave the adults a start.

“Where
did you get those?” Lucia said, and distaste rippled across her face.

“Lake
Tahoe.” Henry held them out for all to get a better look. “Are there any
objections?”

No
one said a thing.

“Grand.”
He offered them to Fiona.

Fiona
looked to Grandmother. She frowned, but nonetheless nodded. A special rule
covered dice in their household.

   
RULE 3: No dice.

It
was the most curious of all the 106 of Grandmother’s rules. Unlike her other
prohibitions, this one forbade a single specific thing. There were none of the
usual elaborations to avoid loopholes . . . just “no dice.”

Fiona
took the cubes. They were warm, but she felt nothing out of the ordinary.

“Give
them a toss,” Henry reassured her. “Over there on the steps.”

Fiona
threw them.

The
dice clattered and came to rest. One showed a single pip, the other three.

Henry
retrieved them and handed them back. “Toss again, please, mademoiselle.”

Fiona
didn’t know if a three and a one was good or bad, or what she had to do now to
win. She did, however, note the adults tense. Fiona squeezed the cubes; they
were hot now.

She
threw them. A three and four. Seven altogether.

“Crapped
out!” Henry announced with a magnanimous grin.

Everyone
relaxed.

Fiona
couldn’t believe it; it happened so quickly. No strategy was involved, either,
just a randomly generated number. “I lost?” she asked, swallowing the lump in
her throat.

“Oh,
no,” Uncle Henry reassured her. “You passed with flying colors.” He turned and
handed the dice to Eliot.

Eliot’s
hand shook as he accepted them. He was sweating. He closed his fist, swallowed
hard, and tossed them.

They
bounced and ricocheted. One landed cockeyed in a pit in the limestone. The
other rolled against the next step, not quite flat.