A Quill Ladder Read online

  “She sneaks out every morning at five o’clock, while your precious head is still nestled in your pink pillow. Of course that’s what she’s doing,” Caleb replied, his green eyes snapping. He had been cool toward her since the night she and Simon had gone to Caleb’s future and refused to tell Caleb what had happened. Abbey shrank away from his tone.

  Or maybe she’s going to look for your older self’s body, Abbey thought miserably.

  She wanted to tell him everything, to have him as her ally again. She and Simon had shared several whispered conversations regarding what to do about Caleb, but had come up with no answers. And now, since the election, Simon had withdrawn back into his room, brooding about something that was unclear to Abbey.

  She still had the list on her iPhone. The list that it seemed she had sent herself. She waffled between, one the one hand, a burning curiosity and determination to resolve the clues, and on the other, a commitment to following her mother’s orders to forget it all and never use the stones again. She hadn’t told either Simon or Caleb about the list, because doing so would result in a definite plan to use the stones again, as soon as their parents stopped watching them every second of every day. And yet here was her mother using the stones herself.

  The first date on the list had been in March. The date she was supposed to save Jake. It was only mid-November. She had plenty of time.

  Or maybe she didn’t.

  It seemed from older Caleb’s words that she hadn’t had access to the list in the previous past. It seemed odd to call it that, since it was actually the current present. So her older self had just potentially changed the course of history, and therefore the dates on the list, by giving Abbey the list in the first place. Perhaps her older self had always left the list on her iPhone under the Madrona. But this time, older Caleb had told her where to find it. Or was older Caleb’s telling her that he had changed his mind about fixing things the trigger that had caused older Abbey to leave the list?

  Abbey had read about the multiple paradoxes that could arise when a person traveled back in time. But what about if knowledge or information traveled back in time, as was the case here?

  It all seemed too circular and Abbey could not straighten it out in her mind. There were too many hypotheses to explain time travel—the multiple universes hypothesis, the branching universe hypothesis, the timeline corruption hypothesis, the self-healing hypothesis, the destruction resolution and so on—all inherently unfalsifiable. This was the fundamental problem with time travel. And most of the existing hypotheses concerned time travel to the past, not to the future. At least the stones didn’t allow one to travel to the past.

  But there was still the problem of the list. Would Abbey change the timeline by acting on the list, and in doing so, what butterfly effects would she cause? Or had Abbey always received the list, and never told Caleb, and by not acting on it this time, she would change the timeline? Perhaps she had always acted on it, but simply failed to change things. Perhaps the course of history was predestined and unalterable and it didn’t matter what she did. She had no idea.

  The man in the beret pointed at the ground again. Abbey rose carefully from the couch. Her father sat in the office on the main floor, trying to complete his work for the day. She, Caleb, and Simon were not allowed to leave the yard, and if they were outside, their father rose to check on them every fifteen minutes or so. Caleb was still at track, and Mark and Simon were each in their rooms. In half an hour, they would be heading down the hill together to collect Caleb, as they were no longer allowed to be home alone. She didn’t have long.

  She poked her head into the office. Peter Sinclair swung around at the noise, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. Faint red capillaries streaked his eyes, and his cheeks seemed more drawn than they had been a few weeks before. The Granton Dam expansion project was underway, and there had been some issues regarding a few contractors subbing in less qualified workers.

  “I’m going outside to shoot a few baskets,” Abbey said.

  Her father nodded, a clear sign that things had gone totally awry. If he had paused to give any thought to her statement, he would question her, as everyone knew that Abbey didn’t play sports. His acquiescence alarmed her more than his appearance. Was it the stress of his job, Abbey’s mother’s health, their recent use of the stones, or something else?

  Abbey laced up her sneakers—surely one could play basketball in sneakers—exited the house, and grabbed the basketball from the wire bin by the front door. She gave a few halfhearted experimental bounces. The ball rose progressively lower with each bounce. Kinetic energy dissipating to thermal energy from friction. It didn’t take long before the ball was lurching from side to side in an uneven bounce, rising only a foot above the ground. Her hand hurt from the impact of the ball and her face felt hot with embarrassment and exertion. Had the man in the tan beret seen? She had been excused from P.E. for three years now in favor of time in the physics lab. She was supposed to be doing track with Caleb, but had twisted her knee early in the season and had been dismissed, rather enthusiastically she thought, by the coach. She ran like a geek anyway, or so she had been told. Too much up and down, with a slight pigeon toe, both of which lowered her cadence and efficiency, while Caleb could outrun a gale.

  Abbey stopped and collected the ball. Bouncing it cautiously, imagining the ball as a wave with a long amplitude and a long wavelength, she proceeded to the end of the driveway, where she would be in view of the man with the tan beret.

  He was gone. She nearly dropped the ball, which would have rolled down the hill at a steadily increasing speed. Knowing her luck, it would have bounced high enough and have had enough forward momentum when it dropped off the raised roadbed at the bottom of the hill that it would have broken the picture window of Abbey’s former piano teacher’s house and landed in the center of Mrs. Grimwald’s beloved grand piano. Abbey quickly ran through the calculation, considering the incline of the road and the moment of inertia of the ball. About eleven meters per second, she decided. Definitely fast enough to smash a window.

  She snatched the ball to her chest, and it hit her sternum with a thud. Basketballs were too hard, big, and heavy, she decided.

  “Looking for someone?” The voice sounded amused. Abbey turned, clutching the ball.

  The man in the tan beret had crossed the street and sat on the curb among the fronds of the juniper bushes that grew on the edge of their yard. His fingers twitched in the air as if he still held a cigarette.

  “No,” she said. It occurred to her that she was still totally unclear as to what witches could do, and that she could be about to be vaporized, or turned into a civet or a lamppost. The image of herself as a civet was almost funny, and she had to choke back a cackle of freaky-sounding laughter.

  “I saw you on the docks a few weeks ago,” he said.

  Abbey nodded, then suddenly regretting it, shook her head. He smiled, and she realized he was very handsome, in a non-threatening sort of way, like he could have been a teacher or a folk musician. But he looked tired.

  “Your mother is the one who rescued us.”

  Abbey nodded, less reluctantly this time.

  “Things have changed a lot around here since… well, since I left.”

  Abbey blew a faint snort of air through her nose, glanced over her shoulder back at the house, and gave the ball a few more bounces in case her dad was listening.

  “How long were you…?” she said.

  “Too long. Almost fifty years. Long enough for my parents to die and the love of my life to move on.”

  “How old are you?” It was a bold question, but Abbey was dying of curiosity.

  The man elevated his shoulders. “Good question. I was twenty when I went to Nowhere. Am I still twenty, or am I sixty-eight? I look twenty, but maybe I’ll drop dead in five years from old age. Or sooner, if I can’t give these things up again.” He patted his pocket, where two cigarettes poked out. “Listen, Frank and F
rancis are going to be here any second. We need your help. We need someone to help us figure out all this computer stuff that you all use now, and help us find that Jake kid.”

  Her help? Abbey was pretty sure this was exactly what she should not be doing. She stole another look over her shoulder. “Francis? You mean Mrs. Forrester?”

  “Nah. Francis is one of the guys with the tattoos. Francis is a common name in witching circles. It means Free Man. Witches historically have often wanted to escape their legacy and the ties that bind us all together. Hence the name. Your Francis—Mrs. Forrester—was always a rebel.” He looked away for a few seconds, his lips pulled tight. “Frank is also named Francis. It gets confusing. My name’s Ian.”

  “I don’t know if I can help you,” Abbey said.

  The Camry rounded the corner below them and headed up the hill.

  “Think about it. I’m guessing your parents are trying to protect you from all of this by telling you nothing. But you can’t escape your genes that easily. The witching world will find you one way or the other, and you had best be prepared. Help us, and we’ll help you.”

  Abbey heard the front door of her house open and, bouncing the basketball again, started to back away from Ian. Her father wouldn’t be able to see Ian under the juniper bushes. The Camry stopped, and Ian darted across and down the street on a diagonal and hopped in the back. Abbey made her way back up the drive, bouncing the ball carefully.

  “What were you doing?” Abbey’s father said.

  “Lost control of the ball. Had to fish it out of the juniper bushes.”

  Her father narrowed his eyes at the Camry, which had wheeled around in the cul-de-sac. Frank, or Francis—Abbey didn’t know, although she assumed for some reason that Frank would be driving—flipped Mr. Sinclair a friendly wave, and then the Camry retreated back down the hill.

  Abbey flicked her head in the direction of Mrs. Forrester’s house. “How much longer do you think they’ll be staying?”

  “I don’t know. It’ll depend on Mrs. Forrester’s recovery and when she gets out of the hospital. We have to go down and get Caleb.”

  “Dad, are you and Mom ever going to tell us anything about this witch thing?” And about Mom’s illness, Abbey thought, but didn’t say.

  Her father’s face tightened. “Abs, you need to understand, once you go down that path, it’s very hard to turn back. It’s dangerous, and your mother and I aren’t convinced that any good can come of it. For all our society’s supposed fascination with witches, most non-witches do not like witches, and there are many very dark chapters in our history as a result. The more you know about witchcraft, the more you might find yourself doing it unconsciously. Your mother and I are still trying to figure out how much you should know and how much we should protect you from it. Energy attracts energy, and as soon as you start using the powers of witchcraft, you might find yourself surrounded by people we don’t want you surrounded by. People who might influence you.”

  A cool breeze slid down Abbey’s neck. It had been a balmy autumn, but winter was coming.

  “Have you ever done witchcraft?” she said.

  “I’d rather not talk about it right now.”

  “But you believe in it?” Abbey pressed.

  Her father stared at the fallen pink rose petals gathered in the garden beside the step. “Yes, I do.”

  “But how does it work?”

  “The general belief is that it has to do with the trapped quantum energy that’s in all matter. Some people are able to use that energy to make things happen.”

  “So no spells, potions, pentagrams, or hexes?”

  Her father shook his head. “We have to go and get Caleb.”

  *****

  After three weeks, Mark had decided that he rather liked living with the Sinclair family. (He missed his mother, of course, but he was less lonely now.) He did wonder if they were all a little distracted, sad, or stressed. It seemed very quiet in the house, and they didn’t seem to talk to each other very much. At least, not the way Abbey, Caleb, and Simon had talked three weeks ago, when it seemed mostly like non-stop chatter, which agitated him a bit. But now they were quiet, and it was nice to share space with other people who didn’t seem to have any expectations of him. Mrs. Beckham (or Ms. Beckham, as she had explained; Mark was trying to remember this, but he was very bad at names) had retrieved his atlases, including his precious Oxford, as well as some of his map-making supplies from his bedroom, and Mr. Sinclair had set several boxes of National Geographic magazines in his new room, dating as far back as 1954, filled with hundreds of maps to study.

  The promised phone call from the very bad man (Dr. Ford) indicating a good time for Mark to go in and trace the map of Coventry Hill had not arrived (his bad feeling about Dr. Ford proving correct), and Mark had recreated the original at a smaller scale as carefully as he could using his 0.05 mm Ohto Graphic Liner Drawing pen on his 100% cotton, 13 by 9 inch paper. The BP marking on the map they had found in the Jag (the bad man’s vehicle) troubled him. When he had drawn the map that night in the dirt in the briar patch, he had intended to suggest that BP meant briar patch, but Abbey had immediately assumed it meant beaver pond, and he hadn’t said anything at the time, because he had become uncertain, which was why he was now studying contour lines. The contours of the creek bed on the original map would help him to know whether BP meant briar patch or beaver pond, since the beaver pond didn’t appear on the original map, as it had presumably just been a creek then. If the BP was a bit to the left of the bend in the contour lines, then it probably meant briar patch. If the BP was to the right and nestled in the bend, then it probably meant beaver pond.

  But he needed the original map to know for sure. He had considered mentioning this to Abbey so she could help him get the original map, but he didn’t like to point out other people’s mistakes. He had told her as much as he could about contour lines and how they worked, hoping she would catch on, but she didn’t. He wondered if he should tell Simon, but Simon had been spending a lot of time in his room since “the incident” (as Mark was now calling it).

  Mark was counting contour intervals as Mr. Sinclair drove the van down into town. The contour interval on Dr. Ford’s map had been ten meters, which was a common contour interval.

  Water was a critical shaper of geography and therefore a critical shaper of contours. Dams changed the course of water. The faint pencil lines on the map of Coventry Hill that they had found in the back of the bad man’s silver Jag concerned him. They seemed to follow the contour lines around the Moon River, but at five-meter intervals, which was a bit odd.

  Which was why he needed that map too.

  *****

  Abbey sat in her room, staring at Mrs. Forrester’s house. Was Ian right? Would her parents really keep all of this from her? Was Ian really her only chance to understand this? Caleb had vaulted into the van after track without so much as a word to anyone. How long could he go on like this? How long could anyone go on like this, with the house so silent and full of secrets? Abbey had watched her mother start to make dinner, a large glass of merlot on the counter. Her mother kept her eyes on her work and her movements were sharp and jerky. Abbey couldn’t be sure, but she thought she detected slight lapses in motor control in her mother’s actions—the salt shaker placed too firmly on the counter, a faint lurch when she turned from the stovetop to the sink, fingers closing with exaggerated care around the stem of the wine glass.

  Abbey had considered bringing up her mother’s promise to tell her everything, but she couldn’t work up the nerve, so now she sat with her chemistry book open to amines and the browser on her laptop displaying entries regarding witchcraft. She shifted her gaze from one to the other. She should do what her mother had ordered and forget all about the stones and witchcraft.

  Amines are derivatives of ammonia in which one or more hydrogen atoms are replaced with alkyl or aromatic groups. Amines are often used in compounds in medications, such as n
eo-synephrine, histamine, and methamphetamine.

  The lights at the Forrester house cast distended and fuzzy rectangular patches of yellow on the grass below. A figure sat on the darkened porch, and Abbey could make out the faint glow of a cigarette.

  She started to sketch out the chemical structure of the three amine compounds. When she got to neo-synephrine, she stopped. Something in her memory twigged. A news article about a girl not much older than her having a stroke after taking diet drugs containing neo-synephrine. Neo-synephrine, which smelled like bitter oranges.

  Abbey turned slowly and carefully to the chemistry set that sat on her other desk at the far side of her room. The test tubes with the amber liquid in them that they had taken from Mrs. Forrester’s still sat in her test tube rack. She had placed the tops on the tubes in a hurry, planning to come back to them later, but then the hospital had called about Mrs. Forrester’s stroke, and Abbey had failed to check to see if the caps were screwed tight. The liquid in the tubes had diminished in volume. Some of the alcohol would have evaporated.

  She stood and approached the test tubes gingerly. She unscrewed one of the caps and wafted the air above it toward her nose carefully. Was that the faint smell of orange? Had someone actually caused Mrs. Forrester’s stroke deliberately? And if so, who? Abbey suppressed a shudder at the number of possible suspects.

  But it didn’t quite smell like orange. At least, not bitter orange. She tightened the cap again quickly, then changed her mind and loosened it off. Perhaps the smell would become more concentrated if she let more of the alcohol evaporate. Should they contact the police? Would she, Caleb, and Simon be in trouble for taking something from a potential crime scene and harboring it for weeks? And really, how would they explain any of it? She placed the test tube holder on the top shelf of her closet and closed the door.

  She retrieved her iPhone and opened her text message app. The list sat there—black words stark against the blue bubble they occupied.