The Wikkeling Read online

  “But why?” said Gary, still not satisfied.

  Their conversation ended abruptly, however, when something surprising transpired down below. The strange child stopped tapping kids on the forehead. It stepped away from the edge of the giant stump, and looked up—right at Henrietta’s house. Right at the three of them looking down.

  They stumbled back from the window. “It saw us!” said Gary.

  Cautiously, they crawled forward and peeked over the sill. It was still looking, its yellow eyes locked on them. They fled back to the couch.

  “But nobody out there ever sees us!” said Gary.

  “If that version of it knows…” said Henrietta, reluctant to finish the sentence. Filled with trepidation, they approached the trapdoor, and Henrietta cautiously opened it.

  There was the chair sitting atop the desk, and the desk on the tan carpet, as always. There was the bedside table, and Henrietta’s canary night-light, and the windows with the shades pulled. There was the bed.

  And standing next to the bed, feet together, arms at its side, was the creature. It looked frozen, like a photo, and its empty yellow eyes stared up at the three of them. Henrietta dropped the door.

  “Oh, no,” said Gary.

  “Maybe it’ll leave,” said Henrietta. “Let’s just wait.”

  They returned to the couch and sat together.

  “Do you think it’s gone yet?” said Gary immediately. He reflexively pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at it. “Hey,” he said. “It’s . . . well, it’s not really working, but it’s kind of working.” He showed them the screen, which was lit, and the digital numbers that indicated the time were there, but crawling at a fraction of their normal pace. “Uh oh,” he said, and they all simultaneously reached the same conclusion: When you’re up in this attic, where time is frozen, it doesn’t matter how long you wait. The thing down below will be there, from your perspective, forever.

  “But it arrived after we climbed up,” said Henrietta. “It came later. So time must be passing a little, or just passing for it, or . . .”

  “Let’s keep waiting,” said Rose.

  They sat for another few moments in silence. “We should try to distract ourselves,” said Henrietta. Gary picked up an old deck of cards he’d found some weeks ago, and started laying them out with Rose for Solitaire, a game they’d learned from one of the dusty attic books.

  Henrietta picked up Early Town from the coffee table. It was still open to the page Mister Lady had been reading, which was an odd-looking, close-up map that showed Boardwalk, the street right outside Henrietta’s house. It appeared to be two maps, one laid on top of the other. The bottom map was the one Henrietta had seen before, of the single-lane brick boulevard. The other map, printed on transparent paper and laid atop the first, showed the road Henrietta had grown up with—four lanes with sidewalks.

  Henrietta tried to puzzle the pieces together. Was this a map of the future—or what was the future, once upon a time?

  “Hey,” she said to Gary and Rose, but the moment she spoke, a loud bang! sounded from outside. The children started and looked at the windows.

  Their view of the enormous trees was obscured by a young man standing outside atop a ladder. He wore a red checked shirt and a blue cotton cap. In one hand he held a hammer, and in the other a two-by-four plank. He looked in but didn’t appear to see the children.

  “Who is that?” said Gary.

  “I don’t know . . .” said Henrietta. Then she did know. “It’s Al! My grandfather!” But it wasn’t the Al she knew. It was Al as he had once been, decades before Henrietta was born—a young man. He lifted the plank and began nailing it to the outside of the house, across the windows.

  “What’s he doing?” said Gary.

  “He’s making the house like it is now,” said Henrietta.

  “We’ve got to stop him!” said Gary.

  “We can’t,” said Henrietta. “He has to do it. The city’s about to knock down the trees and turn the road into more traffic lanes. Look.” She held up Early Town so Gary and Rose could see the overlaid maps.

  “But that just happened!” said Gary.

  “It just happened again, you mean. It happened the first time then, and again now,” said Henrietta.

  “The same thing all over,” said Gary.

  “Do you think Mister Lady left the book open there on purpose?” said Rose. Outside, Al nailed another board on the window, blocking out more light.

  The attic began to darken.

  “Why’s he doing that?” said Gary.

  “So the trees don’t shatter the windows when they fall,” said Henrietta.

  Al disappeared down the ladder for a moment and then returned with more boards. The light diminished further, the shadows deepened, and soon Al’s face was no longer visible. The last board was in place, leaving the attic in pitch darkness. They listened to the final strokes of the hammer. Then, silence.

  “You guys,” said Gary’s voice, strained and a little high-pitched. Henrietta could imagine his eyebrows bunching together.

  “What is it?” said Henrietta.

  “I’m afraid of the dark. Could we open the trapdoor again, just for a second?” There was a cold tremor in his voice, and Henrietta recognized that he was starting to panic. She recalled his disastrous descent the first time she’d shown him the place.

  “Let’s all go together,” said Henrietta. She took Gary’s and Rose’s hands, and they shuffled through the darkness to the trapdoor.

  Henrietta pulled it open a crack. The light from the bedroom flooded in, and Gary began a relieved sigh that caught almost immediately in his throat as he looked down. The thing was still waiting below, fixing them with its steady stare. Henrietta slowly closed the door again.

  “You know,” Henrietta said, “I remember seeing some candles on one of the bookshelves, once. Did you guys see those?”

  “Yeah,” said Gary. “And a box next to them—matches!”

  “Remember when we watched a movie about them in class?” said Henrietta. “Don’t Strike Those Matches. A kid burns his house down.”

  “That movie was really good,” breathed Gary.

  “You two stay here,” said Henrietta. “I’m going to find them.” She released her friends’ hands and felt her way across the floor. She maneuvered behind the coffee table to the base of the nearest bookshelf and slid her hands up the spines of the old books until she reached the top shelf, letting her fingers skim the outlines of the items there. A bronze baby shoe. A glass ashtray. A bookend. And . . . a candelabra, loaded with seven long tapers. She curled her fingers around the metal base. With her other hand, she continued searching until she found the small cardboard box.

  She crawled back to the coffee table, set the candelabra on it, and opened the box. Inside it felt like a bunch of sticks. “Do you remember how that kid lit them in the movie?” she said.

  “There should be some red stuff on one end,” said Gary, “and you swipe it against the side.”

  “I can’t see anything,” said Henrietta.

  “The bigger end,” said Rose, who dealt with matches frequently in the Library.

  She felt inside the box. Each stick had a little bulb on one end. She swiped one against the side of the box. “It didn’t work.”

  “Feel around on the box,” said Gary. “One side should have a rough strip. I have a couple in my trash collection, and I think they’re all the same.”

  He was right. Henrietta tried again, and—Fiss! The match ignited. She held it to the wick of one of the long candles, which caught easily and glowed with a steady, swelling light. She lit two more candles, and then dropped the match on the floor and stomped it out thoroughly.

  “You did it!” said Gary. It was comforting to have a little light, even if their situation was the same as before.

  “What now?” said Gary.

  “Keep waiting, I guess,” said Henrietta.

  “We should sleep soon,” said Rose

&nb
sp; Gary rubbed his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m almost as tired as I am scared.”

  “It does seem pretty late,” said Henrietta.

  “We could camp up here,” said Gary, and for the first time in a while there was a hopeful note in his voice. He’d always wanted to camp.

  “There are probably blankets somewhere,” said Henrietta.

  “In the dresser,” said Rose. Henrietta handed her the candelabra, and Rose led the way back behind the bookcases to an old wooden dresser. Henrietta pulled open the top drawer to reveal a pile of neatly folded blankets. She and Gary scooped up several of them, and they all returned to the main room, where they made up three little beds on the floor next to the couch.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever gone to sleep without brushing my teeth,” said Henrietta. “I hope they don’t rot.”

  “They won’t,” said Gary. “I’ve done it.”

  “Doesn’t your mom make you?”

  “Sometimes I fake it.” He opened his mouth wide, showing two rows of reasonably clean-looking teeth in the candlelight.

  “When I first found Mister Lady up here, I told my mom I was using the bathroom, but I was really getting some bandages,” said Henrietta. The two of them grinned at one another, pleased about their shared history of mischievousness.

  “I’ve lied, too,” said Rose. “To everyone. About everything.” And then, finally, she told the story she had been forbidden to tell.

  She told it because she trusted her two friends and because they had trusted her, been kind to her, and helped her. She began with her home, the Library, with its thousands of old books stretching to high ceilings. She told them about the Subscribers who arrived in the dead of night; about elaborate secret knocks; and about thieves who read historical romances, dumpster diving scientists obsessed with narrative poetry, and former telecommunications employees who loved cookbooks. Once she got started, she kept talking until it was all out, and when she finished, Henrietta and Gary were dumbstruck.

  Henrietta was first to form a question: “You have friends from the Old City?” she said. “What are they like? Are they scary?”

  “The Subscribers are nice,” said Rose. “They come over and fix books with my dad.”

  “How do they live?” said Gary. “Do they kidnap people?”

  “They find things,” said Rose. “Like in trash cans.”

  “They steal trash?” said Gary, his eyes widening.

  “Sometimes it isn’t really trash,” said Rose. “All of my clothes I’m wearing. My shoes.”

  Henrietta and Gary looked at Rose’s shoes. In the low light of the candles, they looked like regular shoes, white plastic with Velcro straps.

  “Those were in a dumpster?” said Gary. He reached out and touched them gingerly.

  “Someone outgrew them,” said Rose.

  “This is amazing,” said Gary. “Amazing.” Everything he’d ever thought about the world was turned on its head in an instant. Trash wasn’t trash. Criminals weren’t criminals. He frowned, and then smiled, and then bit his lip.

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” said Henrietta.

  “My parents said if I ever told we’d have to leave the Library, and I’d have to quit school.”

  “I won’t tell,” said Gary. “Not a soul. Not ever. Unless it’s by accident,” he corrected. “Sometimes I say things by accident.”

  “I’ll remind you not to,” said Henrietta. She turned back to Rose. “But how do your parents keep the whole thing secret? And why is an old library sitting out in the middle of the Addition?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rose to both questions.

  “I can hardly believe it,” said Henrietta. She stared at Rose as if looking at a complete stranger. This little kid was a never ending font of surprises, and Henrietta felt proud to have her as a friend.

  Gary said, “My only secret is that I can’t read.”

  “But you can read now,” said Rose.

  “That’s true.” Gary grinned. “I guess I don’t have any secrets.”

  “You cheat on tests and collect garbage,” said Henrietta, and she leaned over and blew out the candles. In the darkness, they crawled under the covers they’d laid out, and rested their heads on the couch cushions.

  After talking with his friends, Gary felt a little less scared to be in the dark, and he drifted off quickly. Henrietta and Rose followed soon after, both exhausted and scared, but, for the moment, safe.

  A Death in the Family

  After the children departed to Henrietta’s room to study, Aline returned to her work, but even as she prepared a lengthy accounting report, part of her mind continued to ponder the mail from the city. That money could make her life into something she’d begun to think it would never be: happy. Perhaps she could escape the feeling, one she’d had for so long, of being trapped. She wondered how Henrietta would react to the news, and realized that she had no idea at all.

  Aline didn’t feel very close to her daughter. As Henrietta had grown into childhood and revealed her personality, the two of them had begun to clash. Henrietta couldn’t seem to do anything the normal way, and not because she lacked the ability. Rather, she seemed to intentionally avoid fitting in and doing what people required of her. Aline had wondered, on occasion, if Henrietta wasn’t her real daughter. Maybe her real daughter had been switched with someone else’s at the hospital, and some set of sloppy, willful, uncharming parents were wondering how they’d managed to produce a beautiful, obedient, tidy little girl.

  Aline’s phone rang. She looked at the screen and frowned. It was Al. For a moment, she became angry. Why would he be calling her? She’d told him in no uncertain terms when he’d married her mother that she wanted nothing to do with him. It had been the last straw, and she was still, even now, furious that her mother had—

  Her heart sank as she realized why Al was calling. There was only one possible reason. She turned away from her computer and answered the call. “Mother,” she whispered into the phone.

  “Aline, I’m sorry,” said Al’s scratchy old voice. “She passed away peacefully in her sleep. This morning.”

  And the worst of all: Aline hadn’t seen her mother since the birthday party, over a month ago. She’d been so angry, about . . . something.

  “I’d like to talk to you a bit about memorial arrangements,” Al said stiffly.

  “I need to go,” said Aline. “I’ll . . .” she didn’t even finish the sentence, just disconnected the call. She turned to the windows where the slow mass of traffic passed within inches of her house. The cars seemed miles away.

  The Escape Plan

  Henrietta’s eyes opened in the pitch darkness. It took her a moment to remember where she was—the attic, with the windows blocked off, and Gary and Rose beside her.

  “What was that?” said Gary’s voice.

  Something had awakened them both.

  “I don’t know,” said Henrietta.

  Then came a whooshing sound, like a broom scraping across a floor. It came from the blocked windows.

  “It’s the trees,” said Henrietta. “They’re getting chopped down!” The sound continued, and Henrietta imagined the grand limbs toppling, their red and gold leaves brushing the house as they fell.

  “I wonder how much time has passed,” said Henrietta. She sat up, felt for the box of matches and the candelabra on the table, and lit the candles.

  Gary and Rose sat up in their piles of blankets. Rose’s black hair was frizzed out from tossing and turning, and Gary’s was a spiky thicket. They certainly looked as though they’d been asleep for a while.

  They went to the trapdoor and cracked it open, although they all had a feeling about what they’d find. They were right. The creature hadn’t moved. Its eyes were still fixed on the entrance.

  “I’m kind of hungry,” said Gary once Henrietta replaced the trapdoor.

  “Me, too,” said Henrietta. Her stomach growled.

  “I wish we could eat cobwebs, like Mi
ster Lady,” said Gary. He plucked one from an empty bookshelf and eyed it critically.

  Rose tapped the Bestiary’s cover, on the table. “Have you ever looked up the Wikkeling in here?” she asked. Gary and Henrietta looked at her blankly.

  “The what?” said Henrietta.

  “The Wikkeling. In your room,” said Rose, gesturing toward the trapdoor.

  “How do you—” said Gary, and then stopped himself. “Never mind,” he said. “You just know everything. I accept that.”

  They sat at the coffee table, and Gary and Rose looked on as Henrietta flipped to the table of contents and skimmed it fruitlessly. She went to the index. Nothing. Page by page, they examined all the pictures.

  “I guess they didn’t know about it,” she said as she turned past “Alphabeetle,” “False Apple,” and “Tree Goat.” Then a thought occurred. “You know what, though. My grandfather’s version might be better. It’s a later edition.”

  “I wish our phones worked,” said Gary.

  Henrietta continued flipping through the ancient book a page at a time, until she landed on the very first thing she’d ever looked up: Housecats—Wild. She remembered sitting with Mister Lady, studying the strange words, combing the mildewy attic dictionary for the meanings of terms like ingress and egress. She contemplated those terms now, still locked in their same sentence.

  . . . many homes contain so-called “Cat Halls,” thought to encourage Ingress and Egress.

  “Hey,” she said, putting her finger on the sentence.

  “What is it?” said Gary.

  “Cat Halls,” said Henrietta. “Ingress and egress!”

  “You’re right!” said Rose.

  “What? What?” said Gary, looking from one of them to the other. “What are they?”

  Henrietta grabbed the candelabra.

  “Coming and going,” said Rose.

  “People used to put doors in their attics for wild housecats,” said Henrietta. “That’s how Mister Lady got in here, and it’s how we’re going to get out.”