The Nexus Ring (2 page)

“Thanks,” she said. “This is perfect.”

We watched the Gulf Islands ferry load, then pull away from the far dock. Then the Queen of Saanich arrived and unloaded near us. Finally, we heard an announcement for boarding the eight-o’clock ferry to ­Tsawwassen.

As we wound our way through the lines of cars back to our van, Dad said, “Why is the Queen of Saanich here, instead of a bigger ferry? She’s so small, and there are so many cars ahead of us, we’ll never get on!”

“We’ll get on, Daddy. I’m sure we have the right magic,” said Maddy, waving my sketch and her ­feather.

We watched row after row of cars and trucks load onto the ferry, until I couldn’t imagine any more squeezing on. Finally, our row started to move. Car after car crept down to the ferry, until it was our turn. Then the traffic guy put up his hand to stop ­us.

“Oh no!” said Dad. “
Two
hours off our schedule!”

“Maybe we
don’t
have the right magic,” said Maddy, ­worrying.

Then the traffic guy pointed at us, then at the ­ferry.

“Yes!” Dad yelled, and put the van back into ­gear.

I checked behind me. We were the last car to get ­on.

After another long lineup
to buy breakfast
on the ferry, we struggled
through the crowded cafeteria with our plastic trays, to a table barely big enough for four. Mom started in on the game again. “We’ll need more magic to get off the ferry,” she ­said.

Maddy grinned; she loved this stuff. I dug into my ­waffles.

Dad leaned towards me. “Magic might be more fun than I Spy.”

I shrugged him off, then thought about it. Maddy was going to keep bugging me. So was Mom. Maybe if I said yes they’d leave me alone. “What would I have to do?”

“You’ll have to search for the right magic to take us through the next veil,” Mom said. “Let your feelings help you.”

I sighed. “Where do we look?”

“You could look in the gift shop.”

The gift shop? Maybe I’d find something for an art project. I stifled my smile. “I guess,” I said, with another ­sigh.

“What if we don’t find the right magic?” Maddy ­asked.

Mom leaned towards Maddy and whispered, her eyes wide, “Then we’ll be stuck on the ferry for another run. Three more hours.”

We found a tiny gift shop
tucked midway
along the ferry. I groaned when
I saw it. It was too small to have anything ­useful.

Mom gave us instructions. “Look around for something that might be magic. Trust your feelings.”

“How will we know when we’ve found it?” Maddy ­asked.

“You’ll know,” Mom told ­her.

I ­snorted.

“Maddy’s very intuitive, Josh,” Mom said. “You should try it. Listen to that voice inside.”

Mom is so weird. The only time my insides talk to me is when I’m hungry. “C’mon, Maddy,” I ­said.

I browsed through the usual boring adult stuff – mugs and magazines and medicine. The only thing useful for art was an elastic band I found on the floor. As for magic, unless it was made in China, I wasn’t going to find any in the kid section. Finally, I picked up a pen with a little ferry inside and slowly floated the boat to one ­end.

Maddy slipped past a tall woman in a black cloak and picked up something gleaming on the floor. “Look what I found.” She tugged at my elbow. “Josh!”

I shrugged her off. “Just a sec!” She could never wait. I floated the ferry back while Maddy ­watched.

“That’s so cute!”

Cute? I tossed the pen back in the box. “What do you want?”

Maddy showed me a green stone ring, dark in her small hand. “It was lying on the floor.”

“You’d better take it to the clerk.” I followed Maddy to the sales ­desk.

Maddy held out the ring to a young woman at the cash register. “I found this on the floor by the window.”

“Oh, thank you, sweetie,” said the clerk as she took the ring. “It belongs right here.” She dropped it into a bowl of ­rings.

Maddy looked at the price on the bowl, then picked up the ring again. She slipped it on her finger and smiled. “This is what I’m going to buy.”

I heard a gasp behind me and glanced over my shoulder. The tall woman in the cloak was staring at Maddy. When she saw me watching, she spun around and glided away. I turned back to Maddy. “I’ll get some money.”

It took a while to find Mom, lost in a book in the far corner. When I got back, a man was towering over Maddy, one hand reaching out to her. He was short and wide, with thick black eyebrows and huge ears. Maddy looked scared. She leaned away from him, a tightly closed fist behind her ­back.

I hurried to her side, and she grabbed me. The man
scowled a ­black-­eyebrows-­meeting-­in-­the-­middle scowl.
I scowled back, trying to look just as fierce. He glared, then stomped out of the gift shop. I stared after him, my knees shaking. “What did he want?”

Maddy started waving her hands. “He wanted my ring. He offered to trade, but he scared me, so I said no.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Let’s pay for the ring and get out of here.”

“
Did you find the right magic?”
Mom asked as we walked out of the gift ­shop.

Maddy showed her the ­ring.

“This is lovely. What did you get, Josh?”

Oops.
“I forgot. I didn’t buy anything.”

“You have to have something magic,” Maddy said, “or we’ll be stuck here. You have to.” She stomped her foot, and Mom frowned at ­me.

Why was I stupid enough to agree to play? I looked around for something I could say was magic, then remembered the elastic. “Here,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket. “I found this, I mean, it found me, just like your ring found you. So it must be magic.” I smiled at Maddy, and she grinned ­back.

Our smiles are alike and we’re both small, but otherwise, Maddy and I don’t look much like brother and sister. She has straight golden brown hair that lightens every summer as her skin tans. The only parts of my skin that get dark are my freckles. I have pale skin and dark curly hair, like Mom’s, only shorter. Maddy takes after Dad, except she has long hair, and he has hardly ­any.

“Dad said he’d meet us on deck. Let’s go find him,” Mom ­said.

The wind hit us as we stepped ­outside.

“I hope he found a sheltered spot,” Mom ­grumbled.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “He always finds a quiet place so he can spread out his maps.”

“There he is,” said Maddy, and she dashed off to ­him.

Dad looked up and patted the ­life-­jacket locker he was sitting on. We climbed beside him, tucked out of the wind and warm in the sun. Dad sat with an old brass compass in his hand and a map across his knees. “I’m plotting our route through the islands. Want to see, Josh?” Dad’s a mapmaker. He always knows where he is, and he thinks we should, ­too.

“Where’s your gps?” I asked. Dad loves to use his Global Positioning System receiver to get satellite readings on our locations when we ­travel.

“I left it in the van. I’m going to do this the ­old-­fashioned way. This was my father’s compass. Want me to show you?”

“You know that stuff doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“I could teach you,” he said. “I’ll even get you your own compass.”

“But I really don’t care.”

Dad sighed and turned back to his ­map.

I worked on sketches of the islands and the ocean until we neared ­Vancouver.

After a stop at the washrooms (Dad says travellers should pee whenever they get the chance), Dad led us down clanging stairs and through a heavy door to our car ­deck.

“Do you have your magic ready?” Mom asked. “Remember, if you didn’t find the right things, we’ll be trapped on the ferry.”

“We’ll just bounce against the veil and not be able to drive off,” Maddy ­said.

Dad moaned. “That would put us
four
hours behind schedule.”

Maddy held up her ring. “C’mon, Josh. Get out your elastic.”

“All right,” I said, sighing. I squirmed to dig it out of my ­pocket.

As Mom pulled forward to follow the line of cars off the ferry, something moved in the shadows. I glanced over and spotted the man from the gift shop. He caught me staring at him and scowled. I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. “Look, Maddy,” I whispered. “It’s that man who wanted your ring.”

Maddy turned and shivered. “He looks like a troll, lurking in the dark.”

Chapter Two

That Man

W
e struggled through Vancouver
traffic,
then sped past Fraser River Valley farms, towards mountains and fog. I sketched while Mom drove and Dad lectured about ­water.

“There’s the Fraser River, flowing west to the ocean. Once we’re over the Rocky Mountains the rivers flow east.”

“How can a river flow in two directions?” Maddy ­asked.

Dad laughed. “It doesn’t work that way, hon. Imagine the top of a mountain. When it rains or snows, water runs down the mountain. At the Continental ­Divide – ­that’s the border between Alberta and British ­Columbia –­ water coming down one side of the mountain flows west to the Pacific Ocean, and water on the other side flows east.”

“Wow,” said Maddy, but she still looked confused. When her stomach growled, she shrugged and asked, “When’s lunch? I’m starving.”