Billy: Messenger of Powers (33 page)

The two kids, no longer pinned to the wall by Tempus’s magic, stared at the old man in horror. Finally, Tempus whispered, “Well, get to class.”

Harold and Sarah bolted like rabbits with Taser guns attached to their tails, disappearing around the corner in an instant.

Tempus turned to Billy, a broad smile etched across his weathered old face. “I was never very popular in school,” he said, as though in explanation.

Ivy sighed. “You should grow up, Tempus.”

“I will when I’m a hundred,” he said.

Vester was trying hard not to smile, clearly wanting to be a good role model. He looked at Billy. “Where exactly are we going?” he asked.

Billy pointed. The room was just down the hall, not twenty feet away. “Mrs. Russet’s class,” he said.

When they entered the classroom, it was empty, as Billy had expected. Mrs. Russet had brought him to Powers Island a long time ago, it seemed, but as before, no time had passed while they were on the island. They had been in the Russian volcano for a bit more than half an hour, though, and that meant that Preston Hills High School was still in the middle of its after-lunch class period. And that, Billy knew, was Mrs. Russet’s free period, so there was no one in the room.

Not even her, thought Billy. The thought worried him. Where is Mrs. Russet now? he wondered.

He shook himself free of that thought as best he could. It didn’t go anywhere good. And he was doing the best they could to help her by being here right now.

At least, he thought to himself, I
hope
this is where we’re supposed to be. He swallowed hard, trying to gulp down his worry.

Vester appeared to share Billy’s concern. The fireman was looking all around, not seeing anything of interest. “Now what?” he asked.

Billy hurried to Mrs. Russet’s desk. He pulled open a drawer. Nothing. Just pens and pencils, a stapler, some tape. He pulled open another drawer. More of the same.

“It’s got to be here,” he muttered.

“What does?” asked Tempus. He eyed the papers in Mrs. Russet’s desk drawers. “You think she left a note or something?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” said Ivy. “She wouldn’t go to the trouble of leaving a coded message that lead to a note right out in the open.” Then she eyed Billy uncertainly. “Would she?”

Billy opened the last drawer. “Ah-ha!” he whisper-shouted triumphantly. He held up his prize to show everyone. “The jumper that never quite eats!” he exclaimed proudly.

Tempus eyed Billy with a decidedly nervous eye. “It’s sad when the brain starts to go in one so young,” he whispered loudly to Ivy.

“Look, I know it must seem crazy,” said Billy, “but this is what she was talking about, I just know it.” He put down what he was holding, laying it carefully on Mrs. Russet’s desk for everyone to stare at.

It was the ceramic frog. That cute little play-thing that had come alive and seemed to wink at Billy on that very first day, the day when Mrs. Russet had given him and the rest of the class a pop-quiz. The day she had first suspected he might be a Power.

As before, the ceramic figurine held a half-eaten bug in its mouth. “It never quite eats,” said Billy, pointing to the insect form.

“Sad, like I said,” whispered Tempus again.

“Shush, Tempus,” hissed Ivy. She looked at the frog. “I think Billy’s right. I can feel something.” She closed her eyes. A few of her leafy vines snaked out to touch the frog. “Something familiar about this.” Then the vines snaked back to join the rest of the writhing greenery she wore. Her eyes opened. “But I can’t figure out what.”

They all watched the frog for a long minute. Billy didn’t know what to expect, but whatever it was, it wasn’t what happened then: absolutely nothing. In a world where everything was suddenly not what it seemed, where flytraps ate zombies and rock-monsters were destroyed by flying Unicorns, Billy didn’t think it was unreasonable to expect that the frog would do something. But it didn’t. It just sat there, still and cold, and stared at them, and continued not doing anything.

“Boo!” shouted Tempus suddenly. They all jumped.

“Tempus!” snapped Vester.

Tempus shrugged. “I thought it might scare the frog,” he explained.

“No,” said Vester after a moment of glaring at the older man. “There’s more to the riddle. We’re at the place where Billy was empty when he should be full, and we’ve found the jumper that never quite eats. But there’s more.”

“I have to say the words to it,” said Billy. “The words I’ve heard Mrs. Russet say.”

“What words?” asked Ivy.

Billy frowned. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” asked Tempus. “The riddle said she said whatever it is to you! So how can you not know?”

“She’s my teacher,” said Billy. “I hear her say around two trillion things a day.” He thought for a moment, then looked at the frog, crossed his arms, and said in his best Mrs. Russet impression, “All right everyone, pop quiz!”

The frog didn’t do anything.

Billy tried again. “This work is horrible. Everyone gets an ‘F’!”

The frog continued not to do anything. The frog, it seemed, had a talent for this.

Billy tried one more time. “Open your history books, class.”

This time, the frog did so much nothing that Billy was sure he’d never seen anything do as much nothing as the frog was doing right now.

He sighed. “I don’t know what else to say,” he said.

Vester looked at the frog carefully, examining it like he probably examined burning buildings before going in. “I think we’re on the wrong track,” he said. He looked at Billy. “Whatever she said, it was something that
only
you heard. Not something that she said to everyone, but something only you, Billy Jones, would know about.”

Billy thought. That certainly cut down on the number of things he had to choose from. The only times he had ever been alone with Mrs. Russet were that first day of school, when he had first seen the frog, and the day she had brought him to Powers Island.

“A magic keyword, maybe,” said Ivy.

“What’s that?” asked Billy.

“It’s like a password for your email or your bank account. Some Powers lock their Imbued Objects so they’ll only respond to that word or phrase.” She pursed her lips. “I wonder if Lumilla did that. My father…,” she began. She tensed a moment, obviously thinking about her father, worried about the danger Veric the Green might be in. Then she seemed to mentally steel herself and continued, “My father does that. He has a secret sentence that only he uses, and a person has to say it to use certain of his most powerful Objects. Sort of like the anteroom, where we had that hot chocolate: you had to know the right word to get through the door.”

Billy thought. Ivy’s words had triggered something in him. He remembered something, but it wouldn’t quite….

Then he snapped his fingers. “She
did
have something she said!” he exclaimed. “It was something she said right before she used her key to take me to Powers Island.” He inhaled to say it, then exhaled without a sound.

“What is it?” asked Tempus.

“I don’t remember,” said Billy sadly. “It was something about rabbits, but,” he shrugged. “I had just punched a bully in the nose—more or less—and I thought I was about to get in trouble. So I wasn’t really taking notes.”

Ivy looked at Vester. “Do you think you can help?” she asked.

Vester stared at Billy. Then slowly nodded. Billy looked from the fireman to the plant woman. “Help how?” he asked.

“Do you remember Fulgora’s cloak of fire?” asked Ivy. “The one she wore when sitting with the Council on the Diamond Dais?” Billy nodded. “Do you remember what you saw in it?”

“Memories,” said Billy, thinking of the images he had seen in the Red Lady’s beautiful cloak. “My memories.”

Vester nodded. “It’s a power of the Reds. Memories are a part of the Fire that moves us all. It makes us much of what we are. The good memories where we’ve done what’s right warm us in bad times, and the bad memories of times we’ve harmed others or done something wrong burn us and stop us from being happy.”

“So can you help me remember what Mrs. Russet said?” asked Billy.

Vester nodded again. “I think so. Bringing back a memory is hard, and I can’t always do it. But we’re close to where you heard the words, right?” Billy nodded. “Good. Being close helps.”

Vester held out his arm. The lava snake he had conjured up in the volcano wriggled out onto his wrist again. Vester put his hand on Billy’s head. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

Billy nodded. “Will it hurt?” he said.

“It shouldn’t. Not if I can find the memory quickly.”

“And what if you don’t find it quickly?” asked Billy.

Vester looked very uncomfortable. “It’s like Fulgora’s cloak. People can get lost in memory. Some never quite come back from their memories. They become shells, wishing for some perfect moment to happen again. So they try to re-find that moment all their lives, and by doing so they never really live.” He looked seriously at Billy, trying to convey the importance of what he was now saying. “You could get lost in yourself, Billy, and never come out of it. So only you can make this decision; only you can decide whether you think it is worth risking your own life to find out what Mrs. Russet wanted you to know.”

Billy smiled as bravely as he could. “Go ahead,” he said to Vester. He said it quickly, because he knew that if he thought too much about what Vester had said, he might lose his nerve. “I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”

Vester nodded gravely. Billy felt something dry writhe across his forehead. It must be the lava-snake. Then, he felt the Fizzle move to his eye. He closed his eye involuntarily, but it was no use: he couldn’t shut out the fire. The flame touched him coolly, and Billy felt suddenly like he had exploded into a million pieces.

He found himself in a room. A room the size of a planet. Billy stood at the very center of the room, and all around him, as far as he could see, were things that looked a lot like flat panel television screens, or maybe computer monitors. Some were big, measuring what looked like hundreds of feet across. Some were tiny, so small that an ant could use it to furnish its apartment with. And each screen showed a scene, a billion moving pictures that each replayed some moment in Billy’s life. He felt like he was in the largest theater in the world, surrounded on all sides by images of himself.

It was almost overwhelming, the sights and sounds of his whole life crowding in on him at once. Billy started to bow down under the weight of it all.

“I’ve got you,” came an echoing voice. It was Vester, his disembodied words resounding through the vast room of Billy’s memories. Billy felt comforted by his friend’s presence. “Don’t look at the memories too closely,” came the fireman’s voice. “You’re not ready for that yet.”

Billy—or whatever part of him was in this huge room—closed his eyes. That helped somewhat, though he could still hear everything going on around him, so many sounds from so many moments of his life.

The sound of a bicycle bell from a day in the park with his father….

The sound of a song in church….