The Mostly True Story of Jack (23 page)

Wendy reached down and picked up several more mirror shards. They clinked and shimmered in her hands. She could see how the shapes might be brought together, fitted neatly like a puzzle.

There wasn’t much left to hold them up, I’m afraid. The Magic’s been siphoning out of this place for years
,
the pompous voice said.

“But why? Where has it been going?”

For well over a century, there’s only been half a Guardian. Her good half’s been locked out, you see? It’s a terrible way to run things. Only half the planning, half the insight, half the forethought and creativity. My guess is that the other half’s been stolen. Turned into money, or human power. A waste and a shame, if you ask me. She’s
supposed
to keep that sort of thing from happening. It’s Her
job.
The Magic is meant to bless the land, not to enrich greedy men. But, given that She’s only
half
Herself, She can’t see it. Just look what She did to that poor mirror.

“You mean this?” Wendy let the shards spill to the ground.

Indeed. It was one of my first discoveries—and a very clever one at that. I had thought it would make me famous as a… a… well, whatever it was that I did. When She was whole,
She had a mirror that reached nearly up to the sky, where She could watch over the Magic as it poured out into the world. She could do so Herself, of course, and She often did walk about on the surface, keeping an eye on things. Still, though, it’s hard for anyone to be in several places at once. Even a magical being.

So She would use the mirror to see. But, when She split the Magic—and Herself—into pieces, the World-Under-the-World began to shrink and fade. The first to go was the sky. Then the trees, and everything green. She broke the mirror, saying She couldn’t bear to see the ugliness of the world above, but we knew better. She was ashamed.

“That sounds really stupid,” Wendy said, looking at the shapes of the shards. “And a waste of a perfectly good mirror.” They looked so sad all broken up like that. Wendy fluttered her fingers. Maybe, she thought, it would be a better light source if it was all put back together. If it was one, big, glowing object. Then at least she could see. And maybe she could see a way out.

Indeed. As I said, only half the planning. If this continues, I don’t know what will become of all of us. Not that She cares. What’s it to Her if we are all buried under the bluff? She has what She needs. Took our life force, abandoned what’s left to this level of childish and trifling conversation until the end of time, I suppose.

Don’t be like that, meanie
,
another voice said.

Yeah, Mr. Bad Breath
,
chimed another.

Do you see what I mean?

Wendy felt her skin run suddenly cold. “What do you mean you’re what’s left after She took the life force—” She stopped. “What
are
you, exactly?”

We had names once. And families. But that’s all gone now, and we have been erased—or mostly so. I’m sure you know, my dear, what we are, even if you don’t want to say it. Indeed, I daresay that you will be joining our little fellowship as soon as the Lady returns.

Wendy felt something dry and light press against her back and whisper in her ear.

We are souls.

F
RANKIE HELD ON TO THE SAPLING TREES FOR BALANCE AS
he negotiated his way down the steepest part of the gully. Lancelot, apparently tired of dodging branches, clung to Frankie’s shoulder, and, though the claws made him wince, Frankie allowed him to stay. The bird clucked and murmured, a constant whirring of whistles and nonsensical syllables that Frankie felt he might be able to understand if he could only concentrate long enough.

But there was no time. No time at all.

By the time he made it to the mucky bottom of the
gully, his scars burned so hot and bright Frankie was sure they must be glowing. He wondered if it was possible for scars of this type to reopen, or if they were simply reliving painful memories.

If so, the scars weren’t the only ones.

With each step, he saw more vividly the hulking figure of Mr. Avery standing next to a woman—or at least he thought at first that she was a woman. A woman with skin like the smooth bark of a maple sapling and softened by moss. Mr. Avery’s voice saying,
Of course he is my son, he looks just like me
. And she reached out her hand and touched his cheek with her finger.

Her touch burned.

Burned.

It sliced curve upon curve into his skin, but he couldn’t cry out and he couldn’t move.

But someone screamed. A woman perhaps. Or something quite like a woman.

And there was a terrible rumble under his feet, as though the land had changed to water.

And then the light vanished and he was alone in a room littered with broken glass. There was a day—after innumerable days, with the bodiless whispers in the dark and fingers made of wood and root clutching at his face, holding him down—when a man appeared as though on the other side of a screen. An old man with a kind face that Frankie recognized from around town.
I can pull you out, boy
, the man told him,
but it will hurt
.

You’ve been tricked, Lady
, the man had said.
The swap did not occur. See? I’ve brought it back to You.

Frankie watched as the old man reached in and handed something to the Lady’s woody, sluggish hands. The fingers released his face and cupped an acorn cradle—but it was empty. Her child—Her Magic Child—was gone.

A trick!
the Lady’s voice said.
Another trick!
Quickly, the old man grabbed Frankie by the back of his shirt and pulled.

A scream. Then silence. Frankie looked over his shoulder as the woody hands sank into the ground, and all trace of the Lady was gone.

Come back!
Her voice seeped through the ground, through the walls of the underground cave.
Come back to me.
But Clive had already wrapped him in a blanket and didn’t seem to hear Her.
Come back!

And it did hurt. Terribly. And continued to hurt, though more dully thereafter.

You must stay silent
, the man told him.
She is asleep, though barely. Your voice will not work now, I daresay, but in time it will come back. You must not use it. We can’t afford the risk. Your silence will be useful. The time will come when your voice will also be useful, but that time is not now. Do you understand?

The man wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the police station where his parents were called. Later, the mayor, the minister, and the Ladies Auxiliary called
for an ice-cream social to be held on the lawn in front of the town hall. Everyone came, except for the richest man in town, or his wife, or his young son. People noticed, but they did not mention it. They knew better.

Frankie pressed his hand against his scars. The burning was worse now, which meant that he was close. He winced, set his teeth against the pain, willed himself to keep from crying out. He wasn’t altogether sure whether his voice would even work, should his resolve for silence fail him. Other than the few words he spoke to Jack—and even now they seemed barely real, like a dream, or the dream of a dream—Frankie had kept his promise to Clive and stayed silent.

He knelt down at the edge of a slow-moving stream and laid his hands on the muddy ground. It was under him somewhere—that dark place. Which meant, he was pretty sure, that his sister was under there as well. He would find her, and he would trade places with her. The trick, of course, would be to do it before She wised up to it. He’d have to act fast.

Lancelot circled a point in the grass about fifty feet in front of Frankie, and landed on a rock. The bird looked back at Frankie with an unmistakably pointed expression. Frankie dropped the handful of mud and wiped his hand on the side of his shorts. He stood and walked to the rock where the bird sat perched and looking down.

There was a hole.

It was not a particularly large hole—just small enough,
though, for a person to slip through, and, judging by the muddy footprints and the impressions of fingers scraping through the loamy muck, someone recently had. Frankie leaned over and squinted into the darkness.

“Oh, thank God!” a voice shouted from below. “Help! I’m stuck down here. My mom. Someone has to call my mom.” The voice hiccuped with unrepressed sobs, and its consonants lisped and trudged through what sounded like a waterfall of snot. “And, and, the fire department. And a SWAT team. Just get me out of here.” Frankie turned to Lancelot who opened his wings and shook them slightly.
My thoughts exactly
, Frankie wanted to say, but did not.

“And, and, oh my God. Is that you, Freak Show?”

Frankie sighed, shook his head, and stood up. Lancelot looked at him quizzically. Frankie wished he could talk to the bird. The bird had been, for as long as Clive had had him, Frankie’s friend. Though he was sure it was only because Clive had instructed the bird to do that, Frankie appreciated it all the same. It’s not every day that a person makes a friend. Especially when a person doesn’t talk.

From down below, Clayton Avery’s panicked voice echoed through the hole. “No, no, no. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I know your name isn’t Freak Show, it’s… it’s… I mean I know it, I swear! It’s… Frankie! Your name is Frankie! Ha! I knew it! Seriously, Frankie, I’m so, so sorry about the Freak Show thing, but you have got to go and get
some help. I have, um, um—money! Yes! Money! Want some?”

Frankie leaned down and put his face right next to the parrot’s bright beak. Lancelot closed his eyes and laid his head right on Frankie’s scars. The scars, after heating steadily the closer Frankie came to the gully, were now blisteringly hot. Frankie wouldn’t have been surprised if they were steaming. Startled, the bird squawked, backed up, and flew away. After waving sadly good-bye, Frankie dangled his feet into the hole and slid inside.

M
ABEL, ANTICIPATING THE TRUCKS, HAD ALREADY STOPPED BY
at a few different houses with a few choice words. People were ready. Mrs. Schumacher activated the phone tree and Mrs. Nilsson rounded people up in her van. She also brought her barbeque trailer and a yearling hog for the occasion. Anders’s father and two of his older brothers blocked three sides of the house with very large tractors. Neighbors arrived with blankets and picnic baskets and seated themselves on the grass. Mabel’s friends from the Ladies Auxiliary moved through the crowd, shaking
hands and kissing cheeks and patting backs. Everyone was glad to see them.

Jack and Anders stood side by side in front of the window and watched. Mabel walked toward the door. “Don’t let them out,” she said without looking back. Clive laid his hands on the boys’ shoulders.

Jack rested his knuckles on the sill. It was warm and oddly soothing. He watched the faces of the neighbors who gathered on the lawn. Some chatted and waved at Mabel. They scowled at the oncoming bulldozers while passing around cups of coffee and paper plates piled with doughnuts and fresh fruit and fourteen types of pie. The children played tag, pin the tail on the donkey, and capture the flag. There was even a piñata.

There were others, however, who did not sit on blankets, but instead wandered about in a daze, vaguely bumping into one another as though sleepwalking. Jack turned to his uncle.

“Some of these people didn’t choose to come out here, did they?”

Clive took a step back. “No, son. Not everyone.”

Jack nodded. “So who did it? Aunt Mabel? The house?” Jack looked at his hands. “Did I do it?”

“It was the house, which is to say the Lady’s Other, Her good half,
inside
the house. Ever since you came home, She’s been able to send tendrils of Her Magic outward—not a lot, you understand. Thin roots and vines stretching out and retracting.”

“Right.” Jack looked very carefully at his uncle’s face. Clive had an impish look to him, as though his face had been carved from the flesh of an apple and left out to dry, wrinkly and sweet at the same time. “If you don’t mind my asking, Uncle Clive, what are you?”

Clive’s face broke into a wide grin. “Me? I am a person. A man.”

Jack looked at Anders, who stared, embarrassed, at the ground. He turned back to his uncle. “And what am I, then? Exactly, I mean.”

“You, Jack, are
neither
. A creature of earth and Magic and the will of your mother—a Magic Child.”

Anders removed his seed hat, ran his hand through his pale hair, and whistled.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Jack said savagely, poking his finger into Anders’s chest and making him flinch.

“A hunch,” Anders said with a nervous shrug. He jammed his hands into his pockets and examined his bare feet. “I was never sure. But, truth be told, I was becoming more sure than not.”

Outside, the closest bulldozer let out a tall plume of inky smoke. The driver opened the door of the cab and climbed down to the ground. He called something to the people on the grass, but they did not move. He waved his hand a few times, but they didn’t even seem to see him. He removed his cap, rubbed his balding head a few times, and got back into the cab. The floor under Jack’s feet felt stretched and taut, like a muscle ready to spring.
High above, the sky swirled green and red and purple. A dark black spot opened just over the horizon and began moving toward the house. Clive grabbed Jack by the front of his shirt and took Anders by the arm.

“Listen,” he said, “if your mother—or the woman you’ve always believed to be your mother—had listened to us, you would know the stories and would, at the very least, be marginally prepared.”

The ground rumbled beneath their feet.

“Stories?” Jack asked. “What does that have to do with finding Wendy?”

Clive shook his head. “Wendy doesn’t need to be found. We already know where she is. She’s been dragged to the same place where her brother was dragged. She has taken his place. If Mr. Avery succeeds in capturing you and destroying this house, then the Lady’s good half—which is to say your mother’s good half—will also be destroyed and scattered to the four winds. Only Her wickedness will remain. And nothing will prevent Wendy’s soul from being ripped away—and with it all memory of her. We will only have a shadow, a gap that will itch in our minds forever.”