The Fire Chronicle (5 page)

It had been Kate’s duty to look after her brother and sister. She had made that promise the night her mother had come into her room that Christmas Eve so long ago. She could picture it still: her mother leaning over her, fastening the golden locket around her small neck, as Kate promised that she would protect Michael and Emma and keep them safe.

And year after year, in orphanage after orphanage, even when they had faced dangers and enemies they could never have imagined, Kate had been true to her word.

But if Dr. Pym didn’t come, how would she protect them now?

But he will come, she told herself. He hasn’t abandoned us.

If that’s so, said a voice in her head, why did he send you here?

And, unable to help herself, Kate turned and looked down the hill. There, visible through the trees, were the crumbling brick walls and turrets of the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans.

In her defense, it was only when Kate was frustrated or tired that she questioned Dr. Pym’s decision to send her and Michael and Emma back to Baltimore. She knew he hadn’t really abandoned them. But the fact remained: of all the orphanages the children had lived in over the years—one of which had been next to a sewage treatment plant; another had made groaning noises and seemed to be always catching on fire—the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans was the worst. The rooms were freezing in the winter, boiling in the summer; the water was brown and chunky; the floors squished and oozed; the ceilings leaked; it was home to warring gangs of feral cats.…

And as if that weren’t enough, there was Miss Crumley, the lumpy-bodied, Kate-and-her-brother-and-sister-hating orphanage director. Miss Crumley had thought she’d gotten rid of the children for good last Christmas, and she had been less than pleased to have them turn up on her doorstep a week later, bearing a note from Dr. Pym saying that the orphanage at Cambridge Falls had been closed due to “an infestation of turtles,” and would
Miss Crumley mind watching the children till the problem was resolved.

Of course Miss Crumley had minded. But when she’d attempted to call Dr. Pym to inform him that under no circumstances could she accept the children and that she was returning them on the next train, she’d found that all the information Dr. Pym had previously given her (phone number for the orphanage, address and directions, testimonials from happy, well-fed children) had disappeared from her files. Nor did the phone company have any record of a number. In fact, no matter how much she dug, Miss Crumley was unable to find any evidence that the town of Cambridge Falls actually existed. In the end, she’d been forced to give in. But she let the children know that they were unwelcome, and she took every opportunity to corner them in the hallways or the cafeteria, firing questions while poking them with her pudgy finger.

“Where exactly is this Cambridge Falls?”—
poke
—“Why can’t I find it on any maps?”—
poke
—“Who is this Dr. Pym fellow?”—
poke, poke
—“Is he even a real doctor?”—
poke, poke, poke
—“What happened up there? I know something fishy’s going on! Answer me!”—
poke, poke, poke, pinch, twist
.

Frustrated at having had her hair pulled for the third time in one week, Emma had suggested that they tell Miss Crumley the truth: that Dr. Stanislaus Pym was a wizard, that the reason Miss Crumley couldn’t find Cambridge Falls on a map was that it was part of the magical world and therefore hidden from normal (or in her case, subnormal) humans, that as far as what had happened there, the three of them had discovered an old book bound
in green leather that had carried them back through time, that they’d met dwarves and monsters, fought an evil witch, saved an entire town, and that pretty much any way you looked at it, they were heroes. Even Michael.

“Thanks,” Michael had said sarcastically.

“You’re welcome.”

“Anyway, we can’t say that. She’ll think we’re crazy.”

“So what?” Emma had replied. “I’d rather be in a loony bin than this place.”

But in the end, Kate had made them stick to their story. Cambridge Falls was an ordinary sort of place, Dr. Pym was an ordinary sort of man, and nothing the least bit out of the ordinary had happened. “We have to trust Dr. Pym.”

After all, Kate thought, what other choice did they have?

Faint strains of music were drifting up the hill, reminding Kate that today was the day of Miss Crumley’s party, and she looked down through the trees to the large yellow tent that had been erected on the orphanage lawn. For the past two weeks, every child in the orphanage had been working nonstop, weeding, mulching, cleaning windows, trimming hedges, hauling trash, collecting the carcasses of animals that had crawled into the orphanage to die, all for the sake of a party to which they were not even invited.

“And don’t let me catch you peering out the windows at my guests!” Miss Crumley had warned the assembled children at breakfast. “Mr. Hartwell Weeks has no desire to see your grubby little faces pressed against the glass.”

Mr. Hartwell Weeks was the president of the Maryland
Historical Society, in whose honor the party was being given. The society ran a weekly bus tour of “historically significant buildings” in the Baltimore area, and as the Home had been an armory in some long-ago war, Miss Crumley was determined to see it added to the list. She could then—Miss Crumley had this on good authority—charge groups of hapless tourists ten dollars a head for the privilege of stomping through the orphanage grounds.

“And if any of you mess this up”—she’d taken particular care to glare at Kate and her brother and sister as she said this—“well, I’m always getting calls from people who need children for dangerous scientific experiments, the sort of thing they don’t want to waste a good dog on; I could easily volunteer a few names!”

The guests were now beginning to arrive, and Kate watched as men in blue blazers and white pants, women in creams and pastels, appeared around the side of the orphanage and hurried toward the shade of the tent. In truth, she was only half watching. Once again, she was thinking of her dream. She could hear the screams, see the yellow-eyed creatures stalking through the fog, hear the man’s voice saying her and her brother’s and sister’s names. Had the events in her dream already happened, or were they about to? How much time did she and her siblings have?

She trusted Dr. Pym; she really did. But she was scared.

“Well, she’s done it again!”

Kate turned to see her brother, Michael, huffing up the slope. He was red-faced and sweating, and his glasses had slipped down to the end of his nose. A tattered canvas bag was slung across his chest, the pouch resting on his hip.

Kate forced a smile.

“Done what again?”

“Gotten in trouble,” Michael said with put-on exasperation. “Miss Crumley caught her trying to steal ice cream meant for the party. I thought she was going to have a heart attack. Miss Crumley, I mean, not Emma.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? You’re not angry?” Michael adjusted his glasses and frowned. “Kate, you know Dr. Pym sent us here to hide. How can we keep a low profile if Emma’s always getting into trouble?”

Kate sighed. She had heard all this before.

“She needs to learn to act more responsibly,” Michael continued. “To use her head. I can’t imagine I was so careless at her age.”

He said this as if he were referring to some distant era in the past.

“Fine,” Kate said. “I’ll talk to her.”

Michael nodded his approval. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve got the perfect quote. Maybe you can slip it in. Just a moment.…” He reached into his bag, and Kate knew without looking that he was taking out
The Dwarf Omnibus
. Just as she clung to her locket, Michael treasured the small leather-bound book. The night they’d been taken from their parents, their father had tucked it into his son’s blankets, and, over the years, Michael had read and reread the
Omnibus
dozens of times. Kate knew it was his way of staying close to a father he scarcely remembered. It had also had the effect of giving him a deep appreciation of all things dwarfish. This had come in handy in Cambridge Falls when they had helped a dwarfish king claim his throne. For that
service, Michael had been given a silver badge by King Robbie McLaur, and named Royal Guardian of All Dwarfish Traditions and History. More than once, Kate and Emma had come upon him, silver badge pinned to his chest, staring at himself in the mirror and striking somewhat ridiculous poses. Kate had warned Emma not to tease him.

“Honestly,” Emma had said, “it would be too easy.”

“Now, where was it.…” The
Omnibus
was the size and shape of a church hymnal, its black leather cover worn and scarred. Michael flipped through pages. “Oh, here’s a story about two elf princes who started a war over which one had the shiniest hair. So typical. If I was an elf, I think I’d die from embarrassment.”

Michael had a very low opinion of elves.

“Here we go! It’s a quote from King Killin Killick—that’s his real name, K-I-L-L-I-N, not a nickname because he did a lot of killing, though he did that too. So he says, ‘A great leader lives not in his heart, but in his head.’ ” Michael snapped the book shut and smiled. “Head, not heart. That’s the key. That’s what she needs to learn. Yes, sir.”

His argument made, Michael settled his glasses once more upon his nose and waited for his sister to respond.

Michael was nearly a year older than Emma. Nearly, but not quite, which meant that for a few weeks every year, the two of them were technically the same age. And every year, it drove Michael a little crazy. Being the middle child, he clung to his sliver of superiority. It didn’t help matters that he and Emma were frequently mistaken for twins. They had the same chestnut hair,
the same dark eyes; they were both small and scrawny-limbed. Kate knew that Michael lived in fear of Emma getting a growth spurt before he did. Indeed, for a while, she’d noticed Michael trying to hold himself as straight and rigid as possible, as if hoping to give at least the appearance of greater height. But Emma had kept asking if he had to go to the bathroom, and finally he’d stopped.

In five days, he would be thirteen. Kate knew he couldn’t wait. For that matter, neither could she.

“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

He nodded, satisfied. “So what were you writing to Dr. Pym? I saw you put the letter in the tree.”

This was how they communicated with the wizard. Letters placed in the hollow of the tree would reach him immediately. Or so the children had been given to believe. As they had not heard from the wizard since arriving in Baltimore, Kate sometimes wondered if all the notes she’d dropped in the tree were sitting there, unread.

Kate shrugged. “Just asking how much longer we’ll be here.”

“It’s been almost eight months.”

“I know.”

“Seven months and twenty-three days, to be precise.”

Seven months and twenty-three days, Kate thought. And suddenly she remembered waking up on Christmas morning, having just returned to the present, and being told that Dr. Pym and Gabriel had left in the night, that Cambridge Falls was no longer safe, that the three of them were being sent back to Baltimore.

On some level, Kate hadn’t been surprised. The night before,
alone on the witch’s boat, she had learned enough to know that their adventure was far from over. She’d tried to explain the situation to Michael and Emma, gathering them in the mansion library, and reminding them how the
Atlas
, the emerald-green book that let them move through time, was only one of three legendary Books called the Books of Beginning.

“It turns out there’s a prophecy. Three children are supposed to find the Books and bring them together. Everyone thinks we’re the children. They’ll be looking for us.”

“Who will?” Emma had demanded, still upset that Gabriel, her friend, had left without telling her. “The stupid witch is dead! Her stupid boat went over the waterfall!”

That was when Kate had told them about the Countess escaping from the boat at the last moment, how she’d lain in wait for fifteen years and had attacked Kate when they’d returned to the present, how Kate had used the
Atlas
to take the witch deep into the past and abandon her.

“So I was right,” Emma had said. “She’s dead. Or as good as.”

“Yes. But it’s not her we have to worry about.”

And Kate had told them about the Countess’s master, the Dire Magnus. She’d described the violin that had heralded his arrival, how he’d taken over the Countess’s body, how even Dr. Pym had seemed in awe of his power. The Dire Magnus needed them, she’d explained, for only through the three of them could he find the Books.

Snow had been falling past the library windows, the world outside silent and white. Kate had had to force herself to go on.

“There’s one more thing. For the past ten years, all this time
we’ve been going from orphanage to orphanage, the Dire Magnus has been holding Mom and Dad prisoner. It’s up to us to free them. But for that, we’ll need the Books.”

The next day, the children had packed up their few possessions, Kate stuffing the
Atlas
deep inside her bag, and returned to Baltimore.

Now, standing there on the hillside, with the late-summer air warm and heavy against her skin, Kate thought of the
Atlas
. By the end of their adventure in Cambridge Falls, she had learned to command its magic at will. She knew she could make it carry her and Michael and Emma through time and space.

If Dr. Pym doesn’t come, she told herself, I can still save them.

“Hey, I almost forgot. Did you hear what happened at St. Anselm’s?”

Kate whipped her head around. “What?”

“I heard some kids talking. Some sort of gang or something broke in last night. They’re saying Mr. Swattley—remember him?—they’re saying he was murdered. Hey—what’s wrong?”

Kate was trembling. St. Anselm’s was the orphanage the three of them had lived at before first coming to Baltimore. It was also the orphanage from her dream.

“Michael …” She tried to keep her voice steady. “… I can depend on you, right?”