The Fire Chronicle (8 page)

“You mean,” Michael said, “tomorrow, she’ll just suddenly be there?”

“Tomorrow, the next day, the week after that—there’s no telling when.”

“But why would she do that?” Emma demanded. “Why wouldn’t she just come back right away?”

The old man shrugged. “Who knows? We will have to ask her when we see her. Till then, we must continue with our own work. It is what she would want.”

Michael saw Emma nodding. The wizard had held out a thread of hope, and she had grasped it with both hands. For his part, Michael tried hard to make himself believe that Kate was waiting somewhere in their future; he wanted to believe it, desperately. But what if Dr. Pym was wrong? What if they never saw Kate again? He saw life stretching ahead of them, a life without their sister, and the road was dark.

He took a sip of his lemonade, then set down the glass. The drink had gone flat.

Dr. Pym checked the time and suggested they order dinner. He spoke to the small woman—the signora, he called her—in Italian while Emma looked about the restaurant saying, “Get some a’ that! And what that bald guy’s got over there!”

It was amazing, Michael thought, the change that had come over her. Emma had embraced the wizard’s theory wholeheartedly. She’d decided that Kate had jumped into the future, and they had only to keep pressing forward and they would join her. Any other possibility had been dismissed from her mind.

Nice to be young, Michael thought, and gave a weary sigh.

As the food began to arrive—pasta with sausage and peas, a salad of red and yellow tomatoes covered with hunks of soft
white cheese and green strips of basil, a pizza heavy with garlic and onions and tiny fish that Emma picked off and put on her brother’s plate—Michael did his best to make a show of eating, but each bite was an effort.

“Now,” the wizard said, rolling up his pizza like a taco, “I want to apologize that I was never able to answer your letters. Be assured, I did receive them. However, we are together now, and I want to hear every detail of your lives since Christmas, everything you didn’t tell me in your letters. I am all ears.”

The children protested that he should answer their questions first, but the wizard insisted, and they finally gave in, telling him about the awfulness of the Edgar Allan Poe Home, about the awfulness of Miss Crumley, about the feral cat population that had dwindled all summer and the mystery stew the cook kept serving, about the week in July when the showers had broken and how people a block away had complained about the smell; one story led to another, and when they were finished, Michael found that his neck and shoulders were less tense and that he’d eaten two helpings of pasta and that things did not seem quite so black as before and he realized that this had been the wizard’s plan all along.

“How perfectly terrible,” Dr. Pym said. “Now, I’m guessing you must have a few questions for me.”

“Yeah,” Emma said through a mouthful of sausage. “Where’ve you been all this time? Where’s Gabriel? Why’d you leave all of a sudden on Christmas? Who’s this stupid Dire Magnus guy? And where’s he keeping our parents?”

“And what’re we doing here?” Michael added.

“My goodness, what a deluge. But I will answer the last question first. Oh dear.” The wizard had been biting into a thickly ribbed pastry, and a large gob of cream had landed on his tie. He looked about for his napkin—it was right in front of him—and, not seeing it, wiped the cream off with his finger, and then plopped it in his mouth. “So, we are here, in the charming village of Castel del Monte, to see a man. As it happens, I was on my way here when I received a letter from your sister—”

“The one she sent today!” Michael said. “What did it say?”

“I will get to that later. But I immediately diverted my course to Baltimore and then, once I had you in hand, it just seemed easier to bring you along. As to Gabriel’s whereabouts, he is on a mission for me, the same mission, one might say, that drew the two of us away so abruptly last Christmas. I prefer not to go into more detail at the moment.”

“What a surprise,” Emma said. “Hey, can we get another of those cream donut things? ’Cause you kinda hogged that one.”

Before Dr. Pym could ask, the signora placed one in front of Emma.

“What about our parents?” Michael said. “Have you found out where they’re being held?”

“No,” the wizard said. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”

The mood once again became somber. None of them spoke. The silence was finally broken when a bell began tolling in the square. Dr. Pym clapped his hands.

“And that is our cue. Your other questions will have to keep.”

He summoned over the small signora and spoke to her in Italian. Michael took a moment to look through his bag. There
was
The Dwarf Omnibus
, King Robbie’s medal proclaiming him Royal Guardian of All Dwarfish Traditions and History, his journal, pens and pencils, a pocketknife, a compass, a camera, and gum. He’d always made a point of keeping his bag fully packed for just such an emergency, and he felt a warm throb of satisfaction at seeing everything in its place.

Suddenly, there was a shattering crash, and Michael looked up and saw that the woman had dropped a large dish, spraying noodles and tomato sauce all over the tile floor. She gestured to Michael and Emma and let out a burst of Italian. She seemed to be imploring the wizard. Dr. Pym responded, and the woman crossed herself several times quickly. The entire restaurant had fallen silent.

“What’s going on?” Emma whispered.

Michael shook his head; he had no idea.

“Children,” Dr. Pym said, laying several bills upon the table, “we should leave.”

Every eye followed them out of the restaurant. In the square, they were alone, save for the white dog from before, and even it seemed to regard them warily. The setting sun cast the world in a soft amber glow. “This way,” Dr. Pym said, and he headed down the main street at a rapid pace. The village ended after only a hundred yards, and Dr. Pym turned up the hill, leading the children through a gate and into a grove of olive trees. The ground was dry and rocky and steep.

“Dr. Pym,” Emma huffed, “what happened back there? What’s going on?”

“I told you that we are here to see a man. What I did not say
was that I have been searching for this individual for nearly a decade. Only recently did I finally track him to this village. You heard me asking the signora how to find his house.”

“That’s it? That’s what made her drop the plate?”

“Yes, it appears that he is regarded by the locals as something of a devil. Or perhaps
the
Devil. The signora was a bit flustered.”

“Is he dangerous?” Michael asked. Then he added, “Because I’m the oldest now, and I’m responsible for Emma’s safety.”

“Oh, please,” Emma groaned.

“I wouldn’t say he’s dangerous,” the wizard said. “At least, not very.”

They hiked on, following a narrow, twisting trail. They could hear goats bleating in the distance, the bells around their necks clanking dully in the still air. Stalks of dry grass scratched at the children’s ankles. The light was dying, and soon Michael could no longer see the town behind them. The trail ended at a badly maintained rock wall. Affixed to the wall was a piece of wood bearing a message scrawled in black paint.

“What’s it say?” Emma asked.

The wizard bent forward to translate. “It says, ‘Dear Moron’—oh my, what a beginning—‘you are about to enter private property. Trespassers will be shot, hanged, beaten with clubs, shot again; their eyeballs will be pecked out by crows, their livers roasted’—dear, this is disgusting, and it goes on for quite a while.…” He skipped to the bottom. “ ‘So turn around now, you blithering idiot. Sincerely, the Devil of Castel del Monte.’ ” Dr. Pym straightened up. “Not very inviting, is it? Well, come along.”

And he climbed over the wall.

Michael thought of asking whether it might not be wiser to call ahead, but Emma was already jumping down on the other side, and he hurried to follow. They had not gone ten yards past the wall when there was a
crack
, and something zipped through the branches above their heads. Michael and Emma fell to their stomachs.

“Do you know”—Dr. Pym had stopped walking, but was otherwise standing perfectly straight—“I think he just shot at us.”

“Really?” Emma said. She and Michael were flat on the ground. “You think?”

Another
crack
, and a chunk of bark flew off a nearby tree.

A voice shouted down something in Italian.

“Oh, honestly,” Dr. Pym said, “this is ridiculous.” He called up the hill, “Hugo! Will you please stop shooting at us? It is extremely irritating!”

There was a long moment of silence.

Then the voice demanded, this time in English, “Who is that?”

Keeping his head low, Michael peered up the slope. There was a small stone cottage just visible through the trees, but he couldn’t see where the man was hidden.

“It’s Stanislaus Pym, Hugo! I would like to speak with you!”

There was a harsh laugh. “Pym? You dunderhead! Couldn’t you read the sign? Trespassers will be shot! Now about-face and take your doddering carcass down the mountain before I do the world a favor and put a bullet through that oatmealy mishmash you call a brain! Ha!”

“Hugo!” The wizard spoke as if to an unruly child. “Do you really think I’ve traveled this far just to go away? I’m coming up!”

Michael thought he could hear the man muttering angrily.

“Hugo!”

There was a bellow of rage, and then, “So come up, why don’t you?! I always knew that respect for personal property was beyond your limited mental capacity!”

And there was what sounded like someone furiously kicking a tree.

Dr. Pym looked down at the children. “It’s safe now.”

“Are you sure?” Michael asked.

“Yeah,” Emma said. “Maybe you should go first.”

“It’s fine. Trust me.”

The children rose and brushed the dirt from their arms and legs. It was another fifty yards to the cottage, but the man didn’t appear till they were ten feet from the door, when he stepped from behind an overturned cart. His appearance was in every way striking. He had a short, wide body and a wide face. His clothes looked much worn and little washed. His hair and beard were wild and black and neither had been trimmed for some time. Thick brows obscured his eyes, but the message in them was clear: this man was ready to fight the world. He held a rifle in his left hand.

“Stanislaus Pym,” the man sneered. “Isn’t it my lucky day? Surprised it only took you ten years to find me. You must’ve had help.”

“You should not have disappeared, Hugo. It made things very difficult.”

“And you should try not being such a great pompous carbuncle! But the world is not a perfect place.”

Then he turned and pushed through the door of the cottage. Dr. Pym and Emma followed, Emma immediately pinching her nose against the smell. Michael came last, pausing just inside the door. Beside him was an old wood chest, and on the chest was a framed black-and-white photograph. In it were two men in long black robes standing before a stone building. The taller of the men was also the younger by a dozen years, and he held what looked like a rolled-up diploma. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and his hand rested on the shoulder of the second man, a short, heavyset man with wild black hair. The black-haired man was the Devil of Castel del Monte.

Just then the real Devil of Castel del Monte appeared and slapped down the photograph.

“No snooping,” he growled.

Michael stood there another few seconds, waiting for his heart to stop pounding in his chest. He had no idea why the wizard had brought them there, or who the black-haired man was. But one thing he did know: the tall young man in the photo was his father.

“Shut the door, my boy, if you would.”

Michael wondered if that was such a good idea. The man’s cottage smelled like a barn. And in fact, an entire half of it was covered in piles of dirty straw and appeared to have been ceded to the goats. Three of the animals idled near the back wall, eating their dinners and watching the visitors with dull expressions. The left side of the cottage seemed designated to the man’s use. Besides the chest, there was a lumpy-looking mattress. An old wooden table and two chairs. A battered gas lantern. A fireplace in which a few glowing logs lay smoking. A collection of unwashed pots, pans, cups, plates, bowls. And hundreds of books. Many of the books showed signs of having been chewed on or partially eaten, perhaps by mice or the man’s four-legged roommates or, Michael could almost imagine, the man himself in various fits of rage.

As Michael closed the door, the man was wrestling with a goat that was munching its way through a sheaf of papers.

“Let go, you scoundrel! I’m warning you, Stanislaus!”

It took Michael a moment to realize that the man was speaking to the goat.

“Hugo,” the wizard said, smiling, “did you name this little fellow after me? I’m touched.”

“Don’t be,” the man grunted, still engaged in a tug-of-war over the pages. “He’s the stupidest goat in Italy. I wanted his name to adequately reflect the depth of his ignorance! Yours was the obvious choice—
Arrgh!
”