Through the Glass - Part One

Check out all the sections by clicking HER(fix)E

Chapter Four: Through the Glass - Part One

Basil Plant: (Ocimum Basilicum) For centuries, this common household plant has played an important role in religious rituals. Placing it in the hands or mouth of the dead, ancients believed this alchemic herb would ensure a safe passage into the afterlife, opening gates to other worlds for the worthy. Today, this sacred plant is used to prepare holy water and pots of it are often placed below church altars during religious rites, despite the fact that basil is sometimes said to be a symbol of Satan. This herb is often used to add strength to exorcism and banishing spells and potions, but used in excess or used improperly, it can have volatile reactions. Use with extreme caution.

Olive

Olive pouted. “But I helped!” She stomped her foot on the Oriental carpet. They were going to shut her out of their game. They weren’t going to let her play. “I helped.”

“I know you did.” Calla crouched down to look her in the face. “And you did such a good job.”

Olive stuck out her lip a bit more. Why did grown-ups always think that kids couldn’t tell when they were placating them? Did they honestly think that sickly sweet tone made anyone but them feel better?

“I wanna try it,” she insisted.

“Let us try it first.” Rowan dunked two cloths into the squat glass bulb jar full of the lemony potion they’d mixed earlier — exactly forty hours ago. He looked impatient.

His wizarding game came with a lot of silly rules. First, there’d been all the rules for making the potion. Then, he’d said that they had to do this by the front windows on the third floor — that this would be the best place to say the spell. He’d also said something about there being a time limit — a window of time — in which the spell had to be cast.

Normally, Olive didn’t like games with a lot of rules, preferring to make them up as she went, but she still wanted to play.

Handing the other cloth to Calla, he told Olive, “If it works, then — I promise — you can try it when we come back.”

She rolled her eyes. Did they think she was dumb? “If it works,” she reasoned, “then you won’t be coming back.” She wouldn’t even get to say goodbye. 

Again. 

Her lower lip quivered.

Rowan looked at her sheepishly before looking to Calla for help.

Calla patted Olive on the head. “I’ll come back,” she promised. “Plus,” she said, rising to stand, “you’ve got an important job to do.”

Olive perked up, trying to hide her intrigue beneath suspicion, not quite sure this wasn’t just more of that adult trickery. “I do?”

“Sure,” Calla said. “With Rowan and me gone, who’s going to keep watch here, make sure nothing goes wrong? You’re our lookout girl,” Calla told her. “We’re depending on you.”

Oh.

Olive tilted her head and considered it. Lookout girl. Lookout Girl. It sounded like a superhero. So much better than a spy. Olive smiled and her little chest puffed out with pride. Lookout Girl. She could do that. She clapped her hands excitedly. “What do I do?”

A few minutes later, she was standing around the hallway corner, keeping an eye out for her uncle or Flax or anyone else who might come by while also watching Rowan and Calla carefully wash the high hallway windows.

She listened to them chant together as they did.

Suddenly very glad to be Lookout Girl, instead of having to clean a bunch of windows and chant a bunch of weird words, Olive was sure that she’d gotten the better part of the deal.

But then she heard Calla gasp. “Oh my God.”

Taking two steps from her post, she peered closer. “Oh my gosh.” Olive stared at the glass and the figures moving about within the frame. She blinked while her eyes tried to focus on the translucent people milling about just beyond the door. It looked almost as if there were a party just outside the window, as if you should be able to go through them and join the fun.

Except for the fact that Olive could still see the outline of The Elysium landscape — trees and the horizon crossing around and through the ghosts of guests.

Olive looked over at Rowan to see his reaction, but he was just frowning into his window. Olive looked, but at first she couldn’t see anything, just an eerie darkness settled over the outside woods.

Then she saw it, the way the wind caught and caused some of the tree’s branches to move while others stayed perfectly still. Olive studied the scene closely, seeing that the dark forest within the window swayed and moved as if a storm were brewing somewhere there, while The Elysium trees stood and stayed still.

“That your world?” Rowan’s voice was tense as he pushed the grunted words past gritted teeth.

Calla, shocked by his tone, turned and nodded. “Yeah.” She peeked over into his window. “That yours?”

“The forest by Drury Castle.” Rowan nodded. He swallowed hard before looking at her with a frightened but determined look on his face. “Ready?”

Calla took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah.” She gave a humorless laugh. “There’s no place like home.”

Olive watched when, with one last shared nod, they both stepped up to the glass.

 * * *

Leander

Leander was standing at the very top of the tall library ladder, stacking the latest of returned books delivered by the Faceless this morning. Shelving Frank Baum’s famous economic allegory, Leander smiled.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The magical land of Oz, so named when Baum looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N followed by O-Z. Oz. Also called The Emerald City.

The emerald, a green gemstone. The birthstone of babies born in the month of May. Often associated with fertility, good luck, and Ireland.

Leander paused, his hand hovering over the shelves, a paperback mystery still held in its grip.

Ireland, the Emerald Isle. A European island country near the Atlantic Ocean. Referred to as Hibernia by the Romans because it was too cold to conquer. It only has twenty-six land mammal species native to the country because, after the Ice Age, it was isolated from the rest of Europe by rising sea levels. It’s the home of the shamrock, Riverdance, and Guinness. And Rowan.

Rowan.

Leander stopped shelving and bit his lip, suddenly strangely nervous and anxious.

And elated.

He turned to curl himself tight around the feeling and sat on one of the ladder’s steps, tucking and twining his limbs into the wooden legs. He sighed.

Rowan.

Having always had problems with his memory, Leander had trouble remembering everything about him, like when he first saw him or everything he’d said.

But he remembered the scent of candied apples. The color of ripe orchards. And the sound and song of love.

“Hello?” a voice called from far below.

Leander stilled, his body tightening into instant alert.

“Hello?”

Swiftly, he swung himself upright again, ready to spring should he need to. Turning his head, he listened to footsteps that passed fifteenth century maps and headed toward graphic novels from the 1930s to ‘40s.

“Where is that squirrelly, little fact monkey?”

Flax!

Leander recognized the lazy, mocking drawl. Flax. “That traitor,” he whispered, though he had no idea why the thought bubbled up like a synaptic reflex.

He shook his head.

“Leander?” Flax called out. “Get on out here, book boy. We’ve got a couple of questions for you.”

“Do we have to talk to him like that?” the — what had he been called? — fact monkey heard The Elysium manager, a meticulous man named... oh yes, Lenten, ask. “We need his help. You could be a little nicer.”

“What’s the difference?” Flax asked. “By tomorrow, he won’t remember how I treated him today.”

“His condition doesn’t give you a license to be cruel.” 

Leander leaned a bit off the ladder, peering at the man.

Was he holding a doll?

“You know,” Flax drawled, “I liked you better trashed. Feel like getting a drink after this?”

“Just please be nice.” Lenten made a vague waving gesture that Leander assumed meant he wanted Flax to do something.

Like what?

Did they come to do something to him?

Leander quickly scanned the library, swiftly judging distance and accessibility to the exits.

“What are the chances the kid even remembers what happened? That was days ago; he can’t even remember this morning,” Flax commented. “Waste of time coming here. Kid’s got the worst memory in all creation.”

Nuh-uh. “A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds,” he argued insistently. He was better than that.

“Leander.” Lenten turned toward him, spotting him on his ladder in near the library’s collection of fiction from the early 1900s. “May we talk to you please?”

Leander twiddled the novel — Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage — he still held in his hand, stalling. “About what?”

“Can you come down here please?”

Leander thought about it for a moment.

Tricky language tricks.

The use of the word can versus may.

He could come down, yes, but though the question implied it, it did not specify that he should.

“Do I have to?” He studied Lenten studying him, the man’s usually sharp, azure eyes looking a little dull behind his dirty lenses.

Leander wondered why.

“No,” the man said simply, as he passed the tiny, china-faced doll from one arm to the other, “but we’d appreciate it if you did.”

Reasonable request. Difficult to deny. So Leander started down the ladder, taking each step with a deliberate, thoughtful slowness. Mice and other small rodents with limited sight sense dangers and threats through a heightened, compensatory sense of smell, so Leander took several short sniffs as his feet reached for the rungs.

Nothing.

Just the scents of books and wood and something vaguely chocolaty. Nothing insidious. Did that mean all was safe or that he just wasn’t a mouse? Racking his brain as he stepped closer to the men, Leander bit his lip and fidgeted. “So?” he asked, still several feet from them. Plenty of room. Should he need to run, he’d be precious seconds ahead of them.

In sprinting, where a racer’s wins and losses are often measured in hundredths of a second, even the slightest advantage at the starting gate can make the difference between competitors.

Even while his feet itched to run, Leander noticed Lenten make that same, odd hand gesture, urging on Flax.

“You’re the one who wanted to come here,” Flax argued, staring back at the man. “You’re the one with all the questions.”

“Flax,” the man said softly, a pleading quality in his voice.

Leander studied the manager’s face. According to FBI analysts, thin-slice assessments can determine emotional states through stress lines and tension in the face and posture. Leander tried to read Lenten’s face, but diagrams of palm readings and Canadian map keys kept flashing in his mind, ruining his concentration.

“Fine.” With a resigned sigh, Flax stepped forward. “Olive and the two new guests were in here with you a few days ago.” Flax narrowed his gaze. “Do you remember that?”

New guests? Guests. “ ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.’ ”

“As helpful as that was,” Flax said with a wry look, “what we really need to know is if you remember what you were doing with the others?” Smirking disbelievingly, he said, “Why are we even bothering with this kid?”

Leander pouted and turned away, rushing back to the ladder.

He wasn’t a kid!

He didn’t think. Several countries’ and cultures’ milestones and coming of age rites rushed through his mind from bar mitzvahs to sweet sixteen parties. He didn’t remember having any of those. He didn’t remember having any birthdays.

Pouting and curling his hand around the ladder, he heard Lenten call out, “Wait, Leander, please wait.”

Stepping on the first rung but not climbing up, he turned back and snapped, “Selective mutism is characterized by consistent failure to speak when speech is expected.” With a snooty cock of his eyebrow, he added, “Sufferers sometimes show passive-aggressive, stubborn, and obstinate behavior.”

“Flax,” Lenten said in a warning tone.

“Fine.” Flax sighed. “Look,” he said in a trying tone, “do you remember the day or not?”

Leander, still pouting, glared at the traitor. He was not a kid.

“Please,” Lenten said softly, “anything you can tell us would be helpful.”

“Anything about Olive or Calla or Rowan,” Flax interrupted. “Not just random trivia.”

“Rowan.” The image of a boy bubbled up in Leander’s brain.

Lenten straightened, holding the little redheaded doll in his hands. “Yes,” he said. “Do you remember Rowan?”

Rowan.

He was Irish.

Leander licked his lips as he remembered sharp, spicy, winesap red hair and fine fescue green eyes. He was Widdershins. Sad and looking for salvation. He played sonatas, sometimes soft, sometimes stormy. Always beautiful. Humming softly, Leander remembered something. A song.

“ ‘Water to window,

Potion to pane,

Let the line

Betwixt worlds wane.

As one washes 

And glare gets clear,

Let what was far

Be brought near.’ ”

“Meter, rhyme, and ye Old English.” Flax shook his head. “Yep, sounds like a spell. You were right, boss. What do you want to do about it? Shut it down?”

“Well,” the man hesitated before turning back to Leander, “what does the spell do?”

The granite-eyed boy quirked his head, confused.

Do?

“Wonderful.” Flax rolled his eyes. “He can recite a nice, little ditty just fine but he can’t remember anything actually useful, like what’s it’s for.”

Leander sneered.

He could remember.

He could!

He knew he could. If he tried. It was on the tip of his tongue. He was just suffering a little lethologica, he thought as he frowned in concentration, stuck in a state of not being able to recall a desired word or phrase.

Bad Broca’s area.

Brief brain flatulence.

“We’re getting nowhere here.” Flax leaned against one of the shelves dismissively.

Blocking him out, Leander thought about two days ago. He scrunched up his face, trying to force some kind of cognitive recall.

Nothing.

He sighed defeatedly.

“Think about Rowan,” Lenten’s voice suggested quietly.

Rowan. What came to mind when he thought about Rowan? What had they been saying that day? What had they done?

Spells, the word cropped up in Leander’s mind like a sprout.

The word typewriter is the longest word that can be spelled using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

That wasn’t right.

Meter.

There are 3.280839895 feet in one meter.

No, wrong too.

Rhyme

There are no words in the English language that rhyme with month, orange, silver, or purple.

Ye Old English.

Shakespeare invented the words assassination and bump.

He shook his head furiously, trying to clear his head, his scrambling synapses firing at random, sending his scattered thoughts rushing back in a mangled mess. He pressed his hands to his temples, his gnarled fingers tangling in his hair.

Stop it! He tried to order his unruly thoughts.

Goldfish, kept in the dark room, will eventually turn white.

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

“Leander?”

“Shut up!”

READ PART TW(fix)O

 

WANT MORE?

FIND MORE STORIES HERE