The Unseen (22 page)

Just as she had feared, the main room of the cabin was bare. Or almost bare. The rough wooden walls no longer held Belinda's collection of pictures and posters, and there were no books on the rough plank shelves. But sitting near
the empty shelves there was a row of small sturdy boxes. Moving from box to box, Xandra confirmed her suspicion. The boxes were full of neatly packed books. So there was still hope. Belinda would never go away and leave her books, which probably meant that she and the grandfather were still around and might be back very soon. And when they arrived …

Sitting down on one of the biggest boxes, Xandra prepared herself to wait. But she had not been waiting long when all sorts of worrisome possibilities came to mind. What if they had already gone away and were planning to send for the books at some later time, perhaps days later? And even worse, much worse, what if they had been preparing to leave when something happened to them? Perhaps something terrible. Something like …

Xandra was at about that point in her thinking when the shaky shack reverberated to the sound of running footsteps on the stairs and the door flew open—on Belinda.

Xandra jumped to her feet. “Oh, Belinda,” she said, and for just a moment Belinda's face echoed her happy surprise, before it closed into a tight, suspicious mask. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“You're leaving?” Xandra's answering whisper was both a question and an accusation. “They told me at the school that you were leaving and I just had to see you again before—”

“Why? Why did you have to see me? Haven't you caused us enough trouble?”

“Me? Caused who trouble?”

“Me and my grandfather.”

“Caused you and your grandfather trouble? How did I
do that?” she asked, although she was beginning to get the feeling that maybe she knew. “You mean by telling those girls that you had magical powers? What was wrong with that? They deserved to be scared a little. And I thought you must have liked the way it changed things. I mean, it sure did change how those girls were treating you. I thought that was why you wouldn't talk to me anymore, because you had so many new friends you didn't need me anymore.”

“No.” Belinda was shaking her head. “No, I didn't like it. I tried to stop them but I couldn't and then someone told her parents and the parents called the school and …” She paused and then went on. “And that's why we're leaving.”

Xandra was amazed. “I don't understand,” she said. “Why would that make you leave?”

“Because it happened before. Where we used to live someone started telling people my grandfather was an evil person. And there were some people there, where we used to live, who believed in evil powers and things like that.” Belinda's deep eyes focused sharply on Xandra's face. “But he isn't evil. He never does anything to hurt people. He's just a special kind of thinker who sees in a different way and knows about things other people haven't learned about. But some people thought he was dangerous and that was why we had to come here to live.”

Still bewildered, Xandra said, “But I thought you liked it here, in the commune.”

“Like it?” Looking around, Belinda shrugged and threw out her hands dismissively. “Do I like this dirty old place?” She looked pained and sad.

For a moment the word “dirty,” as in “a place with no vacuum cleaner,” made Xandra wince. It was a guilty wince but she shook off the guilt and said, “But I don't see how it could be my fault. I didn't mean to get you into trouble.” Xandra was still insisting when another voice answered, “No, I'm sure you didn't.” Xandra whirled around to see a tall, narrow figure in the open doorway. The grandfather.

Startled and fearful, Xandra was backing away when the man's dark eyes met hers and she stood still, steadied and no longer frightened. “You meant no harm,” he was saying, “and Belinda was also speaking truthfully when she said we meant you no harm. And yet I'm afraid I did harm you by letting Belinda show you how to use your Key to evoke the world of the Unseen. I should have met you first and learned more about who you were. If I had, I would have understood that it was … too soon.”

“Too soon for what? If it was too soon, why did I get the feather? The Key, that is.”

The grandfather shook his head. “It's hard to say exactly why, except that merely having it in your possession might only have made you
aware
of the world of the Unseen, instead of being a part of it. And that awareness might have made it possible for you to—”

“Aware of?” Xandra interrupted. “You mean I would have seen those things sometimes but they wouldn't have been able to hurt me?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Xandra stared from the grandfather to Belinda and back again before she burst out, “But what are they? Where do they come from and what are they?”

The grandfather nodded slowly before he began. “They
are everything and nothing,” he said. “A flowing river of shapeless elements that take on definite shapes only when they enter a person's field of energy. And even then they ordinarily cannot be experienced by the sense organs of humans without the use of a Key. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Xandra nodded uncertainly at first and then more confidently. “I think so.”

“Yes, I think you do,” the grandfather said. “Although such forms are entirely invisible to ordinary eyes and ears, the shapes they take on seem to be influenced by, or reflections of, each individual's feelings and emotions. But if a person has never possessed a Key, she only experiences them as a kind of inner awareness.” He paused and smiled before he went on, “As when an angry person says, ‘It was really eating at me,’ or, ‘I am burning up.’ Or as another person might say that something was giving them ‘good vibes’ or ‘a great feeling.’ But the use of a Key takes one into their world. The world of the Unseen.”

“But I can still see them sometimes,” Xandra said. “Even when I haven't used the Key.”

“And you will continue to, I think,” the grandfather said. “Even when you no longer have the Key.”

Xandra narrowed her eyes as she shoved her hand between the buttons of her coat to where she could feel the living warmth of the white bird's gift. “When I no longer have …” she was beginning to ask when Belinda grabbed her arm.

Pushing her toward the door, Belinda said, “Come on. We have to go now and so do you. I'll walk with you as far as the gate.”

They didn't talk much on their way up the hill. With her mind sifting through a whirling mass of ideas and feelings, Xandra said nothing at all until they had passed the crest of the hill and were on their way across the farmyard. It was then that she asked, “What did he mean when he said when I no longer have the Key?”

Belinda nodded and answered, “He told you before. No one has one for long.”

Xandra thought of protesting, of saying she would never, ever, for any reason give up her enchanted gift, but when she turned to Belinda and began to speak, she found she'd lost her train of thought. Instead she asked, “Will I see you again? Will you let me know where you are and how we can go on being friends?”

Without hesitating Belinda said, “Yes, I will.”

And Xandra knew that it was true.

W
HEN
C
LARA, WHO
as usual was the only one to notice that Xandra had been gone most of Saturday, asked where she had been, Xandra quickly thought up a reasonable-sounding excuse. It wasn't until after she'd said it that she realized it was the truth, or at least a part of the truth. What she said was “My best friend is moving away and I went to tell her goodbye.”

And when Clara said, “I see. But I do wish you'd tell me when you go out,” Xandra stared at her soft round face and worried eyes and said, “Maybe I will, next time. Yeah, I promise. Next time I will.”

Later that night, when she was in bed trying to read, but mostly thinking about what the grandfather had said, there was a soft knock on the door. A light, uncertain tapping
before the door opened just a crack. Dropping her book and scattering a layer of animals, Xandra sat up quickly and, just as quickly, relaxed. The eye that was peeking through the crack was at a level that suggested either a smallish creature of the Unseen—or possibly …

“All right, Gussie, I see you,” Xandra said. “Come on in.”

The door swung wide and Gussie bounced across the room to launch herself, facedown, into the middle of Xandra's animal collection. Pushing to a sitting position, she started checking out the nearest animals, which happened to be a pig, an alligator and a shaggy Chincoteague-type pony. As Gussie hugged, kissed and whispered to each toy, Xandra watched with curiosity. Gussie was acting, Xandra decided, like a kid who'd never played with a stuffed animal toy before, which certainly wasn't the case.

“Hey, kid,” Xandra said. “What's the big deal? Your room is full of stuffed animals.”

Clutching the pony to her chest, Gussie nodded enthusiastically. “I know,” she said. “But yours are better.”

“How come?”

Gussie thought for a moment, tipped her head, smiled her killer smile and said, “Because they're yours.”

Xandra was still thinking that one over when Gussie reached into her pocket, brought out the tiny teddy bear and said, “I had to bring Ursa back.”

And when Xandra said, “No, you didn't. I gave him to you, remember?” Gussie nodded and said, “I know. But he was lonely for all his old friends, especially the bears. He's really lonesome for the bears.”

So Xandra let Gussie crawl around the bed for a while
reintroducing Ursa Minor to all the other bears before she said, “Okay, kid. Enough is enough.” Shoving a very large shaggy bear into Gussie's hands, she said, “Here, take Baloo with you. He'll keep Ursa company.”

That night when the lights were off, Xandra worked at the awareness thing, listening and sniffing, squinting and doing quick sideways glances. But there was nothing—at least nothing for sure. Once or twice there was a brief purring sound, and one other time a fleeting smell of newborn kitten. But that was all. And nothing at all that hinted at hooded figures with fiery eyes and flashing teeth.

But the very next evening there was another “intra-family altercation” of a sort. It happened in the family room, over what channel they were going to watch. The twins weren't there, so the participants were Victoria and Xandra on one side and Quincy on the other. Quincy only won because he was bigger and stronger, which was especially unfair because Quincy could have gone to his own room and watched it on his own “overprivileged-eighteen-year-old's” private TV. Except that he kept saying it was the kind of movie that needed to be seen on a giant screen. So he sat there and watched the stupid wide-screen war movie while Xandra got more and more infuriated. Some yelling had gone on, most of it by Xandra, before Tory suggested that she and Xandra go to her room and play Scrabble, which they did.

That was something they hadn't done for a long time, so all by itself, that was a big change. And another change was that Xandra didn't get upset when Tory won two out of their three games. At least not very. But later that night,
when Xandra was sitting on the window seat, she thought she saw a dark hooded figure oozing between tree trunks and hedges. Just about then, however, an owl flew by and while Xandra watched its flight, the hooded shadows blended into the smooth and silent night.

The next week went by like that, with only vague hints of Unseen creatures, and then one morning when Xandra woke up, the Key was gone. The strong necklace of heavy string was still around her neck but the feather had disappeared. It had been there the night before and there was no way it could have been taken without her knowing. She searched everywhere, under and around every stuffed animal, under the bed and between the blankets, before she allowed herself to remember that she'd been warned that it would happen.

Even while she was remembering that both Belinda and the grandfather had told her that no one had a Key for long, Xandra felt miserable and angry. And she started the day by letting everyone know it, without, of course, telling them why. She was still feeling angry and ill-treated when she got off the school bus that afternoon, and there they were, both of the Twinsters, waiting for her in the driveway of the Hobson Habitat. She was suspicious at first, with good reason. And then very much surprised.

One of the twins, Nelson she thought at first, but it turned out to be Nicholas, was holding a large cardboard box and in the box were three very young kittens.

“Hey,” Nicholas said. “Look what we brought you. Three new candidates for the Xandra Hobson Society for the Prevention of Kitten Murder.”

“Yeah,” Nelson said. “These guys we know were about to throw these dudes in the river when we came to the rescue.” He grabbed the box out of Nicholas's hands. “Come on. Let's take them down to the basement.”

Xandra was so surprised she almost forgot to be angry. But on the way to the basement she demanded to know how they knew. “When did you find out about … about what I do in the basement?”

They both laughed. “We've known for years,” Nicholas said, and Nelson added, “We've always known. We used to check it out every once in a while when you weren't around. The owl was pretty cool.”