The Bone Flute (11 page)

Gilda fumbled at the box with shaking hands.

Camrose watched her anxiously. She's scared. Just like I would be. I should go in there and back her up, she thought. But her feet would not cross the threshold.

The box dropped from Gilda's hands, hit the carpet and bounced aside. She held something thin, rolled in white cloth.

Then the cloth slipped off and the thing in her hands was brown and smaller than Camrose had expected. It didn't look like much at all. Just an old bone.

“Bring it closer, Keeper!”

“Yes, child. Bring it here. Remember your promise.”

Gilda looked down at the thing in her hands, then at the end of the room, at the unseen speakers. “I can't. This isn't right. I need more time!”

She turned toward the door and for the first time looked straight at Camrose. Her eyes went wide. She took a step in that direction and flinched back as a curtain of flame whipped across her path.

Her arm swung. “Take it!” she yelled. “Whoever you are, take it and get out!” And the bone spun through the flames, through the doorway, and smack into Camrose's outstretched hand. It was heavy, hard and cold.

The door slammed in her face. She leaned on the outside of it, coughing. She pounded on the panels. “Gilda!” Smoke seeped from under the door.

Wait a minute, Gilda got out. She lived to be mayor. But the others … There were other people in the house: a father, a mother, a sister. All would die.

Camrose ran to the stairs and started up. But the fire was there, too, reaching for her with red hands. She screamed for everyone to get out, but the smoky air sponged up her voice. And she knew they wouldn't hear her because she wasn't there.

The smoke was thicker. The fire had eaten through the wall and red-gold flames were biting chunks out of the ceiling. She fumbled along the wall farthest from the fire.

Now she knew how Gilda's house had burned down. Because it was happening now, this minute. The house was burning down around her.

And she was slowing down. As if the air itself was holding her back. Each step was like pushing through deep water. She could be trudging along the bottom of a lake, drowning. Or would drown soon, if she didn't get out fast.

She looked ahead, toward the doorway. It was closer, but how long had she been struggling toward it?

And then she saw, clear through the billowing smoke and the blue wall, a glimpse of treetops and clouds. The storm dusk was passing. The house was fading.

If it fades with me in it, what happens to me?

Charred walls and ashy carpet blurred into a blue mist around her. Even the flames were sickly looking.

One step, then another. Now it was like dragging her feet though mud. Beyond the wall a branch tossed in the wind. Another step. A sketch of clouds surged above the ceiling. One more sluggish step … The door was closer now.

Sweat rolled down her face and splashed on her hand. At least that showed she was still solid. One more step, and she reached forward to grasp the brass handle of the door. It slid out of her grip like jelly.

She wedged her shoulder against the door and pushed. It inched open.

I'm going to make it, she thought. Her right hand curled around the stubborn nothingness of the door. I'm going to … Time, motion, the whole world trickled to a halt.

Then something stopped her breath. She looked right through her own left arm to the paneling behind it. The bone flute in her hand was opaque, and felt heavier than iron, colder than ice, but her own bones and muscles and skin were shadows.

I'm not going to make it.

17
Flute music

T
he door melted from her shoulder. At the same moment a hand gripped her fingers and yanked. Stone steps shot up at her. She fell through them, landed hard, and lay face down in long wet grass, too stunned to move. Somebody touched her head.

“I'm all right!” Camrose pushed Mark away, sat up and pulled in a deep lungful of air, cool and moist after the rain. Then she went into a fit of coughing. “'Cept my throat … feels like somebody's been … skiing down it!” She blinked at him with watering eyes. “If you hadn't pulled me out, I wonder where I'd be right now?”

He squatted in front of her. “Better not think about that.”

He sniff ed at her. “You smell like smoke.”

She coughed again. “I'm lucky I'm not a cinder!”

“You really were in there. In the ghost house.”

“You just figured that out?”

“Still getting my head around it.”

“You didn't really believe me before, did you?”

“There's a difference,” he said carefully, “between believing somebody and knowing a thing for yourself. You … you just vanished!”

“Well, here's the real proof!” She held out the flute.

Mark sat back on his heels. “So that's it. Not much to look at, is it? Where's the carving?”

“We'll check it out later.” She jumped to her feet and shoved the flute into the waistband of her jeans, under her T-shirt. Her skin shivered away from its cold touch, but there was no way she was going to walk up Grant Street with the bone flute in her hand, plain to see.

As they climbed the street she told Mark what had happened inside the ghost house. “You see, I can't just hand it over. I've got to be sure.”

“Which one started the fire? That should tell you.”

“It doesn't. I never saw their faces and I'm not sure of their voices. I'm only sure of one thing. I want to get this horrible dead bone away from me!”

“We could be wasting our time,” Mark said. “Maybe they don't know you've got it.”

It was five o'clock. Mark was sitting on Camrose's desk chair, busy with a handheld electronic game. Camrose was sitting on the bed with her pen and notebook, trying to write down what happened in the ghost house.

“I bet they know. But I can't decide which of them should have the flute. I wish I could just throw it away.”

A clinking sound came from behind the closet door. Wire hangers swinging, hitting each other.

Mark bounced from his chair and Camrose leaped from the bed. They exchanged pale-faced looks. Mark nodded, and Camrose yanked open the door.

“You!”

“Surprise, Keeper!” Miranda was squatting with her toes curled around the hanger bar.

“How did you get in there?”

“I get around. I see you found it.”

“Does this mean
they
know where it's hidden?”

“No. But they know you've got it. Now everybody waits for you, including me.”

Camrose set fists on hips. “Okay, if you're so anxious for me to decide, you can help. I need to know what's going to happen to Diarmid if I give Terence the flute.”

“You know the story.”

“He swore to make Diarmid dance in the outer darkness forever,” Mark said. “Whatever that means.”

“
Mmmrr
.” Miranda's lips curled back from her teeth. She jumped down from the bar and prowled around the room.

Camrose closed the closet door and leaned on it. “It means something bad, anyway. Could he do it?”

“Course he could. In his land everything has two faces, every light makes two shadows, and there's a back door to everywhere.”

“Door. What does that make me think of? Oh, I know. That time by the river, today,” Camrose said slowly, “he made me see his father's hall in the Otherworld.”

“So that's why you were looking so out of it,” Mark said.

“I guess I was. Anyway, it was a big beautiful room, but there was a door there that … ” She shivered. “It looked like they hoped it wasn't going to open any time soon. Miranda?”

“What?” Miranda was scrunched in the corner next to the desk.

“Do you know anything about a do—”

“Brutal thing?” Miranda croaked. She slid down the wall. “Strong, all bound about with bronze, locked tight, guarded?” The lower she slid, the more she shrunk.

“That's it! Where does it go?”

“Nowhere,” Miranda whispered.

“But how can that be?”

“Take it easy.” Mark frowned at Camrose. “Can't you see how scared she is?”

Miranda was not much more now than a quivering heap of fur. “The door,” she muttered from under her hair. “It goes Nowhere. To the place where Nothing is. The Void.” She drew a hissing breath and whispered, “The Outer Dark.”

In the silence that followed, Camrose thought she heard an answering whisper somewhere far away, like a cold wind in a stony place. Mark glanced around uneasily.

“If Terence gets the flute,” Camrose said, “he'll send Diarmid through that door. How can I let that happen?”

“So, give the flute to Diarmid,” Mark said.

“But if I do that, Terence might hurt … Bronwyn, and … and other people. If only there was somebody we could tell!”

“Like who?”

“My dad. I could phone … ” No, she couldn't. She'd tried again in the last hour, once from a pay phone downtown and once from Mark's house. That time Mark tried to make the call. Same result.

“Anyway, what makes you think he'd believe you?”

“He would, that's all!”

“Never. Not even my Uncle Wes would believe. He's cool about a lot of things, but he wouldn't understand about this.”

“If only my dad was here and seeing it all for himself! If only he … ” Light dawned. “Okay!” She threw herself at the closet.

“What?”

“What do you think?” She pulled armloads of clothes off the bar and dumped them on the floor. Then lifted the loose steel clamp and swung the bar off its wooden bracket.

“Cam, what're you doing?”

“What did that rhyme say? I bring the blood back to the bone … ” The bar was hollow. Camrose reached inside and pulled out something wrapped in a white gym sock. Then she replaced the bar on its bracket.

Miranda was hovering at her shoulder. “It says, ‘I call the blood back to the bone, I call the spark back to the stone, I call the heart back to its own, I call the wanderer home.' And it isn't a rhyme, Keeper. It's a spell. One of the strongest.”

“Good. I'll bring him home myself.”

Mark looked worried. “I don't know. In the story they said it was an evil thing.”

“Listen to him, Keeper, he talks sense!”

“Oh, that was just in the story.” The more they tried to warn her off, the more they irritated her. “Look, if nothing happens, fine. If it does work … Well, Dad will be here, all of a sudden, all the way from Nova Scotia, and then he'll have to believe, won't he?”

She sat on the bed cross-legged, the flute in her hands. It was nothing like what she'd pictured from the story of Diarmid the bard. It was brown and stained and looked exactly like what it was: an old bone, about ten inches long, with holes in it. You could see where someone had carved something, but the carving had worn down to a spiral line of scratches.

“Just a bone, after all,” she muttered. But it wasn't just a bone. It was cold as the earth under a rock and heavy enough for three bones. She didn't like touching it.

For courage, she thought of her father. She pictured him sitting at the kitchen table, waving a finger as he argued with Bronwyn over something on the six o'clock news. “Bring him home,” she murmured. “Home.” She took a breath, raised the flute to her mouth … then put it down and exhaled.

“Wait, let me think.”

“Nobody's stopping you,” Miranda growled.

“Suppose I bring him home, and he believes me, and he tries to do something about Terence, and then Terence … Maybe it's not such a good idea.”

It gave her a funny feeling when she realized what she was doing. Protecting her father. Wasn't he supposed to protect her? A strange, lonely feeling.

“If only we could find those three women,” Mark said. “Those Wyrde. You could just hand the flute back to them.”

“They won't come,” Miranda said from her new perch on top of Camrose's dresser. “They don't interfere. They're not allowed.”

“Not allowed?” Camrose laughed. “Who'd boss them around?”

“That would be telling—a lot more than I'm allowed.”

“I bet you don't know.”

“I know this, as Keeper it's your job, and you have to do it, not me. You're the one with the powers.”

“Powers?”

“Powers?” Mark echoed.

“Me? What powers have I got?”

“I thought you'd never ask.” Miranda interlaced her stubby fingers and recited, “The powers of the Keeper are these: plain sight, far sight, insight and foresight. And unfolding from these gifts of sight, judgement: the power to decide. There.”

“You're kidding. When did I ever see … ” Camrose stopped, remembering the burning house.

“Just now, when you decided not to call your father home, that was insight.”

“And today when I saw what Terence really looks like?”