A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (26 page)

71. MELODY

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Were my grandparents
actually helping us to formulate a plan to stop the vortex in Orla? Were they
really planning on going “camping” with us to some lonely old ghost town in
West Texas to stop an out-pouring of supernatural entities? I assumed that was
what this was all about – else why the panic from Matthew’s ghost? It had to be
bad. It had to be like that night in my room, only a hundred times worse. I
shivered.

I wandered to the front corner of the room where the photo
of Matthew and I was still propped up against the wall from the other night. I
looked around and saw the glint of a few missed splinters still hiding under
the loveseat.

“Maybe I should call her now?” I heard Sam say.

“Don’t tell
her what
we’re up to,”
warned Gram.

I let the screen door bang behind me as I left to get the
broom, relieved for a break from all
the woo
-woo talk.
Footfalls from behind me preceded Tara’s voice.

“Where you going?” she asked, slightly out of breath,
catching up to me.

“Just to get the broom – to sweep up the
broken glass.”
It’s like the universe wasn’t going to let me forget. How
many times was I going to have to sweep?

“I’m sorry about the whole Lily thing,” Tara started.

I could tell she really was sorry, but truly, I wasn’t
bothered about that right now. Instead I was just numb. “Don’t worry about it.
G. and Sam both seem sure that she needs to be
there,
and there might be a good reason for it. I don’t even care about that. I kind
of don’t care about anything right now – none of it will bring Matthew back.”

Tara followed me inside, and I rummaged through the pantry
for the dustpan.

“No, it won’t. But closure is good, right?”

I looked over my shoulder at her; she blinked behind her
glasses, the blue of her eyes went battleship gray in the dim light. “You know,
I was just about at a point in which I didn’t feel torn up every time I thought
about him. I was really on my way to being normal again and now, here we are,
ripping open that wound, pouring salt on it… I wish we had never used that
stupid Spirit Board.” I paused to take a breath and close my eyes. “I wish he
had never shown up,” I whispered.

I felt Tara reach around from behind me and throw her arms
around my shoulders. She put her face on my back and said, “I know.”

We stood like that for a moment or two longer, until I
became vaguely embarrassed that someone was giving me a hug. I wiped at my eyes
a little bit, and then we ventured back to the clubhouse, broom and dustpan in
hand.

“It’s decided then,” announced Gram with finality.

“What’s decided?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew.

She looked at me, a frown line between her eyes. “We need to
be in Orla before the solar eclipse, with enough time to set up. There’s
nowhere to camp out there, so we’re just going to have to stay overnight
somewhere along the way.”

“Or drive straight through…” Sam suggested, hesitantly. “I
mean, we could, right? Just leave at night and keep driving straight through until
morning?”

“We could, but you all really need to be in the best shape
possible for this – that means a good night’s sleep and a decent meal. You will
need all the energy and focus you can muster.”

I approached the table and looked at the Texas highway map
spread out across the table. Someone had highlighted the route to Orla with an
orange marker, and I traced it with my finger. And as I did that, a small
tingle went up my finger and into my arm. I pulled my finger away from the
paper and then put it down on the orange highlighted line again. The tingle
came back. “Weird,” I said.

“What’s weird?” asked Gramps, wheeling up next to me.

“When I put my finger on the line, I feel a tingle in my
arm.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “Feeling energy from a map is not
that different from feeling it from a photograph. The same principle applies.
The question is
,
do you get a good sense or a bad
sense from it?”

The others had stopped talking to watch me as I traced the
line again. I frowned, trying to concentrate on what I was picking up. “It
feels normal until right about here,” I stroked a part of the map with my
finger again. “Here there’s a little resistance, as if I am pushing my finger
over a… bump?”

“Very good.
That is how it feels to
me, too. But not everyone will feel it the same way. See if you can figure out
why you sense the energy change there.”

I ducked down to get a closer look at the map. There were
the usual lines for farm to market roads, highways, and the interstate. But in
that particular spot along the route, the only thing that stuck out as being
different was a mountain range. “There’s something like mountains there,” I
peered at the map.
“The Callahan Divide.”

Gramps grinned at me.
“Very good.”

I smiled slightly and looked up to see Sam looking at me. He
nodded to me with a tight-lipped smile and I felt a tiny butterfly flutter in
my stomach. I smiled back at him, and I think I might have blushed a little bit
too.

Gram slid her hand across my back and then hugged me from
the side. Geeze, two hugs in one day, I must be special. I squashed my
sarcastic inner voice and instead just tilted my head to the side to lean on
her shoulder. She was a little shorter than me, but it felt good to do it all
the same.

I guess I had decided not to reject my gift after all.

#

We loaded up the car with sleeping bags, lanterns, a camp
stove, and other camping items. Gram had gotten out the cooler and packed it
full of sandwich and hot dog fixings, and Tara showed up with her tent.

Packing her tent was a little bittersweet since the only
people who had ever slept in it were her and I, in my backyard. But in a way,
that made it better – not only were we sharing it with Gram and Gramps, but we
were using it this one last time, almost as if we were marking a transition between
childhood and adulthood. The symbolism was Tara’s idea, but it resonated with
me too.

The crunch of gravel alerted us to Sam and G. pulling up in
Sam’s new ride, and I looked up from loading the car to see the two of them and
Lily getting out of the convertible, looking slightly windblown but happy.

Lily approached, the smile on her face nonthreatening,
though there was definitely a dark question in her eyes – as if she was saying
“are we cool
?.
” I gave her a long look back that said
“Maybe.”

“Hey guys! So cool of you to invite me camping,” she said,
gesturing to the stuff. “I haven’t been in ages, though I used to go with my
aunt and uncle all the time when I was a kid.”

“Cool,” I said, not really sure what else to say, or if I
was even interested in saying anything.

“I’m going to ride with Melody on the way there,” Tara said,
smiling. “But I’ll probably ride with you guys on the way back, if there’s
room?”

“Oh, sure.
We packed light since
your”—Lily looked at me—“Gram said that she was bringing enough food for
everyone. So really there wasn’t much else to worry about besides a tent and
sleeping bags.”

I nodded, wishing I could come up with something clever to
say, but I was beginning to realize that I was a little intimidated by Lily.
She didn’t come off as overtly aggressive, but the black combat boots and
cut-off camo shorts gave her a tough-girl vibe that I knew I didn’t have. I
scanned up her layered tank tops to her red lipstick and dark eye makeup and
realized that she was exactly Sam’s type and I was… not. I saw it so clearly
now.

Lily was dark, edgy, unpredictable, high energy – exactly
the kind of person Sam needed to keep him focused and engaged. I knew I should
be happy for him, but instead, it just made me feel even
more
sorry
for myself.

“Hope you brought sun screen,” I said, regretting it as soon
as I closed my mouth. It sounded kind of bitchy.

Lily grinned. “Don’t worry, I brought gallons.
The spray kind too.”
Her eyes were less daggers now and more
aloof, almost neutral.

I smiled. “Cool.” Are we cool? Yeah, we’re cool, at least
for now.

#

The drive was long and fairly uneventful. The landscape was
not terribly interesting to see until we got out toward Abilene. From there,
the acres and acres of windmills were both whimsical and awe inspiring. Every
once in a while, we would pass a large semi pulling a trailer with one of the
turbine blades on it, and each time I saw one, I was amazed at how freaking
huge they were. If the blades were that large, how big were the windmills?
Yeah.

Also out along the highway heading west, we started to see
land formations that looked like they wanted to be
miniature
mountains
, except someone had sliced the top of them off so that they
were flat like table tops: the Callahan Divide. I looked at Tara.

“I wonder if these are the mountains that the boys saw in
their
dream?
”

Tara gazed out the window and shook her head. “I don’t think
so. These look too far apart to be what G. was describing to me.”

As I turned my gaze back to the window on my side of the car
again, I realized I was feeling a slight pang of jealousy. I’d never been
jealous of Tara before, and it was an uncomfortable feeling. It used to be the
three of us and now it wasn’t. Now it was the “five” of us, except it wasn’t
really that either. It felt a lot like the two of them, and the other two of
them and… me. I sighed.

“What are you thinking about?” called Gram from the driver’s
seat.

“Not much. I mean, we’re heading out into the great unknown
here. None of us really know what we’re supposed to be doing, and I think it’s
fair to say that we don’t even know why we’re going.” That sounded convincing,
I thought, probably because it was also true.

“Don’t get too discouraged,” said Gramps. “
Your
Gram and I have done this kind of thing before.”

“You have?” Tara and I asked in unison.

“Oh yes,” he said.
“Even Matthew.
That’s what we were doing down in Fredericksburg, you know.
When
that photograph was taken.”

“Is there, like, a ceremony or ritual we have to follow?”
Tara asked. Gram glanced at us through the rearview mirror.

“Not exactly,” she said. “We’ll tell you more tonight, when
we’re all together. You can ask questions then.”

Tara slumped a little in her seat, but I hardly noticed
since I was already off on a tangent thinking about that photograph that Esme had
taken of Gram, Gramps, and Matthew. I fished around in my bag and pulled it
out. I sat idly, with it in my lap, tracing the outline of each person with my
finger. Gramps had said he could feel energy from photos. I could now feel
energy from a map. What might I get from this photo? Could I still feel Matthew
even though he was gone? Did his energy linger?

72. SAM

I’d never been to the desert before. There was something
haunting about it at night – desolation all around you, the light of a million,
million
stars above you. I’d never seen the
milky way
with my own eyes, but there it was, a swathe of
filmy gauze striped across the sky. It might have taken my breath away if it
hadn’t been for Lily lying beside me, staring up at the stars, too, chatting on
about everyday things, with no knowledge of what tomorrow would bring and how
it might change us all.

I let her chatter on because it would be rude for me to
interrupt, but also because her voice was soothing in that familiar way – it
made good background noise for my nighttime daydreaming.

I found the Pleiades in the sky and focused on it, letting
the rest of the stars fade away into an indistinct blur of light and darkness,
letting my mind
unfold
as the wind blew.

I hadn’t tried this kind of daydreaming since I was a child,
but somehow I knew that to do my part in Orla, I was supposed to
see
. Margaret had called me the Lantern,
and I supposed that meant I should cast some light on the situation… that maybe
my dreams have meant something all along, and finally I was going to find out
what.

The constellation brightened, drowning out the rest of the
stars, and the tiny shape that resembled a question mark opened up and folded
out like a box within a box. I’d never seen such a thing before but I didn’t
have to ask what it was – as so often was the case during my dreams, the
information was given to me. It was a tesseract.

The boxes were hinged on each corner so that they could
slide in and out of each other. As I watched, one became opaque and the other
translucent. They flattened out and unfolded, and there were eight cubes
stacked like a four-sided cross. And in one cube was the face of a man I knew
very well --Matthew. There was a searing light as the cube he was in split
open. And then he was leaning over me, his face nose to nose with mine.

“Save me,” he whispered.

My whole body jerked like I was electrocuted, and my eyes
flipped open, wide and searching. It had been so real.
He
had been so real.
WTF?

Lily had gone quiet but was still beside me, dozing off. She
woke as I began fidgeting for my phone and asked muzzily “What’s up?”

“Shit, I’ve got absolutely no bars out here. Let me see your
phone?”

She fumbled for hers and I waited impatiently, resisting the
urge to snap my fingers. When she handed it to me, I was hopeful – she had
three bars. But when I tried to use the browser and
do
an Internet search, the three bars slid down to zero. “Damn it,” I said,
frustrated.

“What’s the deal?” Her eyes were closed and she was already
beginning to fall back asleep.

“I need to look up what a tesseract is.”

“Oh that’s from
A
Wrinkle in Time
,” she said. “Ask Mrs. Who.”

“What?”

She giggled.
“Not what,
Who
.”
She waved her hand lazily
in the direction of Tara and Melody’s tent, where Gram and Gramps had already
settled down for the night.

“Great idea, I said,” and leaned in to kiss her neck.

She giggled again, but she had rolled over onto her side and
slid her arm beneath her head. She was already mostly asleep again.

#

“Are you sure he said ‘save me’?” Gram asked, leaning toward
me, searching my face.

Gramps was reading my aura and he nodded slowly. “Margaret,
he’s telling the truth.”

“I
wasn’t doubting
that, Harold.”
She wrinkled her brow and frowned. “I just want to be sure he had the words
exactly right.”

“Why, what does it mean?” I asked.

“I remember
A Wrinkle
in Time
,” Tara said. “I must have read that book a dozen times growing up.
In it, the kids use a tesseract to reach another dimension.” She glanced at
Melody quickly and then away again. “They had to rescue Meg’s brother, Charles
Thomas.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

“What does that mean?” Melody said, and her voice had an odd
quavering to it. “What are you guys trying to say?”

“They aren’t saying anything dear,” Gram said.

Gramps leaned forward to pat Melody’s knee, and G. reached
out to put a hand on her shoulder.

“Does this mean he’s not really dead?” G. asked.

“We don’t know what it means, and we won’t know until
tomorrow. It isn’t good to speculate too much.”

There was a sound of crunching gravel from outside the tent,
and suddenly the group went very still. I was closest to the flap, so I leaned
out and was startled to see Lily listening.

“Oh, hey,” she said.

“Hey, I thought you were sleeping.”

“I woke up and it seemed like everyone was gone. Freaked me
out a little bit.”

“Sorry,” I said, feeling slight chagrin. “Come on in and
join the party.”

“Actually, I think I’m ready to go to sleep now, if you
youngsters don’t mind,” said Gram, shooing us with her hand. “Go on out and
enjoy the stars. It’s a beautiful, clear night. We’ve a big day tomorrow.”

We piled out of the tent, and I stood up and captured Lily’s
hand.

“What does she mean ‘big day tomorrow’? Aren’t we just out
camping? I mean there’s nothing around here for miles except sand dunes and
vultures.”

“We’re going to visit a ghost town tomorrow,” offered Tara.
“It’s been abandoned
forever
.”