Wildcat Fireflies (15 page)

“I’m … Juliet.” I was too tired to make up a name; he didn’t feel threatening.

“Ah, lovely name.”

“I guess.” I shrugged off the compliment.

“Best song by my favorite band. Come by the shop and I’ll play it for you.” He hummed a few lines.

“Sure.” I agreed with no intention, no ability, to actually take him up on the offer.

“Well, then. Are there lots of kids here?” he asked, as he moved to the door. “Your brothers and sisters?”

“Oh, no. We’re foster kids.” I always felt shame when I confessed that to people. As if we’d done something wrong, something to deserve this fate.

“Ah.” He seemed at a loss. “Well, then. I hope we’ll meet again.” He paused, hesitated, and then left.

“Goodbye.” I shut the door behind him, heard him whistling his way down the walk.

“Who was that?” Sema peeked her face around the column of curtains hanging in the living room. She often hid in the curtains, for hours at a time. I’d learned to look for her toes along the bottom when I entered a room.

“No one.” I quickly burned the flyers in the fireplace until the invitations were charred curls of carbon. “No one,” I repeated until I started to believe it.

I’
d spread Auntie’s journal and a couple of notebooks out on the cottage’s kitchen table. There were only a few blank pages left and I’d added an entry or two. I felt like what I wrote had to be vital to be worthy of getting added. As if a panel of my ancestors scrutinized every stroke of my pen. Soon, the book itself would need to be changed and maybe I’d write more in it, when all I saw was my own writing. The thick leather binding was covered in embossed roses, windows, candles, and silhouettes of animals and insects. The paper was thin, fragile parchment. Occasionally,
I found greasy, dirty fingerprints on the pages, and the fading ink wasn’t waterproof. I was searching for an entry, a mention, even a lowly sentence that might illuminate how best to figure out if Nocti or Fenestra lived in that broken place.

“Almost, almost.” I was close to seeing a pattern here.
Maybe
.

“What?” Tens glanced up from the laptop. He took the more modern approach to research. Since he’d discovered technology he was in love with gadgets. He even wanted me to transcribe the journal into a Word document so we could cross-reference the information better.

“I’m close,” I said, not taking my eyes from the text.

“To what?”

I growled. “I don’t know. Something.” Right there in the fringes, in the mist, an important piece waited for me.

Custos barked and pawed at the front door.

I jumped. “Custos!” She’d been edgy all day.

A demanding knock came a few seconds later.

“That’s just creepy,” I muttered, and grabbed the journal, putting it under the stack of papers and tossing a napkin at the spine. If it fell into Nocti hands …

Tens ambled to the door. “Ready?” I saw a bulge at his back. A weapon?

I skittered away from the table. “Sure.” The visitor was probably just Joi with cookies or leftover Danish.

Tens opened the door a crack, then wider. “Rumi?”

“I come bearing word of your spirit angel.” The man’s voice boomed like a freight train.

How does he know?
I sat down. We’d never given him details about who or what we were looking for. Just mentioned a girl, not that she was a Fenestra.

“I think you’d better come in then.” Tens shut the door behind him.

The herbs drying on the ceiling hooks almost smacked Rumi on the head. “Do not worry. I said nothing. She is luminiferous like you. Glows about the edges.” He pointed at me.

“What do you mean, I glow?” I asked.

“As if you stand in front of the sun. You have a lambent, lightsome quality about your outline. It’s fuzzy.” He asked Tens, “Do you not see it?” Without waiting for a response, he turned back to me and asked, “You must see it in the mirror when you’re doing your sonsy makeup and such?”

I shook my head; so did Tens. I might be denying the obvious to Rumi, yet in all honesty I didn’t see the Fenestra in me that way. More like a movement outside of my vision, a brush of something or someone other.

My expression must have read as disbelieving or appalled, because Rumi lowered himself into a carved rocking chair by the fireplace. He appealed to us. “I am not mad. Eccentric, maybe, but not howling bleezed.”

I couldn’t hold back my laughter. “We don’t think you’re crazy. Honest.” He appeared so completely befuddled. “Would you like some tea?” I got him a mug and pulled down the basket of assorted tea bags.

“Sure, always a good time for a cuppa. Though I prefer coffee if you’ve any.”

“Sorry.” I shrugged. We drank the stuff, but usually only if someone else made it.

“Ah, well, then give me something black and strong.”

I grabbed milk and sugar, since I knew he drowned his black in white.

I poured myself grape soda and Tens a Coke.

“Tell us more about the girl.” Tens picked up his drink and settled on the couch next to me.

Rumi gestured behind him toward the propane logs. “Won’t be turning that on later in the week. There’s a warm front coming, something fierce.”

“It’s going to warm up? How do you know?” I sipped.

“How did you know what to eat for breakfast?”

“Tens put it in front of me.” I smiled.

Rumi beamed at me. “Ah, a cynic. I enjoy a good and cunning logodaedalus.”

“The girl?” Tens prompted. Rumi’s conversations wandered on tangents. Then there was his vocabulary, which a dictionary wouldn’t help with; I didn’t have the first clue how to spell most of the words he used.

“Ah, well. I got to thinking, about how to get a lot of people together, you know, so you could ask questions, take their vibes, listen to the chavish. Whatever it is you do.” He shrugged. “I decided to host an open house at the studio to kick off Feast Week. The best way to get numbers of people to cross my path, and perhaps find this girl of yours.”

Tens twitched his lips. I squirmed, trying to keep up.

Rumi took it with good humor. “I appreciate the quest, you understand. Without being trusted with full disclosure. I made a point of visiting establishments housing us elderly types since you said the girl, and the cat, are connected to a nursing home. Correct? People like to talk, so I took invitations around to see what there was to see.” His gaze meandered, as if he was lost in his own thoughts. His expression grew stormy and troubled.

“And?” I prompted, leaning closer to Tens, whose face had cleared to blank alert. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest of this story.

Rumi had lost a quotient of his lightness. “She’s a lacerated soul. Sad one, eyes full of sausade. To the point of breaking under the omnistrain. Full of rage.” He shook himself.

“You got all that by squinting at her?” I asked.

“No, of course not. She’s tall, gifted with a body built to survive hard physical labor and childbirth, broad shoulders, broad hips—perhaps with the right diet she’d bloom to zaftig. She’s solid. Built to withstand, you see? Long hair, longest I’ve seen on a girl in some time; I’d wager she’s never cut more than a little at a time. Golden
hair, the kind of real blond that no chemical or salon can make. Strands were white like fresh butter, others a deep burnished wheat at harvest, still more caught the light and turned lemony. Her eyes were unexpected. Those threw me a skosh.”

“Blue? Green?”

“Golden brown. Glandaceous, like ripe acorns. I don’t see that color often in eyes. I look into everyone’s eyes—they’re like glass if you’re paying attention. Clear or cloudy, bright or damp. They speak. If eyes are windows into someone’s soul, hers are shuttered and battened down for the big one.” Rumi shivered dramatically. “But that place—Lord help the souls in there. Or maybe I should say
you
help the souls in there. I have an idea of a friend to call, but they’ll need the second coming of pick-your-savior. You’ll do, I suspect.”

I blanched. “I’m not God.”
I am so not godlike
.

“Ah, so that’s the first time you’ve told me anything about yourself.” He appeared pleased with himself, as if he’d tricked me into revealing an important detail.

I rolled my eyes, echoing Tens’s grin earlier, not able to contain myself. There was an intangible quality about Rumi that persuaded me, on a very elemental level, to confide all my secrets and truths.
As if he is a designated secret keeper. Like the Señora
.

He continued. “Her name is Juliet. She is a foster child. She took the flyers I gave her, but I have the distinct impression she threw them away. There’s fear in that place, a compulsion to self-protect, an ambsace. Now, what do we do? Are we on a rescue mission? I have this friend—”

Here was my most honest impulse
. “I have no idea.” I didn’t. I’d been so concerned with finding her, I had no idea what to do once we did.

Rumi shuddered, dismissing my response. “You must have some idea. Even if it’s desipient. Why are you looking for her in the first place?”

Tens broke in and told him the story we’d made up about my adoption and the quest for my biological family. It was a lie, a huge one, but the one we both could remember. I knew who my family was and I wasn’t a kidney patient needing a donor, but people believed us and so we stuck with that story. I felt bad lying, but it was a necessary evil to protect ourselves. I hoped we could learn to trust Rumi, because he might very well be the most delighted person in the world to find out the truth.

Rumi set his mug of tea on the table and first looked Tens square in the eye, then me. “Now, I understand you don’t know if you can trust me. I honestly do apperceive that. It disappoints me, but I can work with that reality. I can also moil helping you—without knowing why, or what—if there’s a larger picture we’re bringing to light. But under no circumstances do I want lies.” He pointed at me. “You were sick, yes, but it was soul sickness, not some kidney problem and you’re well on your way to whole. Simply tell ol’ Rumi you can’t answer, but don’t lie to me. Fair enough?”

Tens nodded. “Fair enough.”

I stuttered, torn by the inexplicable feeling that given a chance, I could trust him. “I
want
to—”

“And someday you will trust me. Someday, I will beg
you to shut up, I’m sure, but until then we will be about getting to know each other. I brought you some of my Nain’s artwork to look at. They may prove helpful. Or not. I’ll leave them for you so you can react without my audience.”

Thoughtful
. “Thank you.”

“Do not mention it, but return them to me tomorrow night at seven.” He stood.

“Seven?” I asked.

“I’m having a dinner party to introduce you to several local folks who can be counted on.”

I panicked. “I don’t know—”

He brushed aside my reluctance. “Small. Just a few people. They may be helpful. They may not. But it is a place to inchoate, to start, while you decide if you’re going to help me rescue that poor girl or if I’m going to have to act rashly and artistically.”

“Don’t.” Tens put his hand on Rumi’s massive forearm. “Give us until then to talk things through. There are many pieces to this—”

“And many things that could go wrong, a
schlimmbesserung
, if we’re not careful. Fair enough.” Rumi let Custos clean his hands, then he left, whistling a jaunty tune that belonged on the sea.

I blew out a breath as the door shut behind him. “Wow, um …”

“He’s a force of nature.” Tens’s tone reflected my own feelings.

I paused. “Do you think really?”

“No, an expression. But he’s definitely demanding and used to getting his way. He makes me feel really dumb.”

“He doesn’t mean to, but I think he’d make everyone feel stupid and babbling.”

“A good ally, perhaps?”

“Maybe. I think so.”

I started to unfold the pages in the wooden box Rumi had left. The pages were brittle and browning; most were black ink line drawings, others were colored in with watercolors or pastels.

All windows
.

“Tens.” My tone must have imparted warning, because he was at my side in a blink.

All the windows were the same. A large rectangle topped with a half circle. Each window was divided into four panes with cross bracing, and the half circle was filled with a sun, its rays unfurled like flower petals to fill the space.

Tens exhaled as he took one page after another from my hands.

The scenery beyond the windows was tiny. Intricate views, a few even showing people waiting on the other side. As if by viewing these pieces of parchment, we also saw a soul’s personal window. They were images so similar to things I’d experienced, to ones Auntie had shared with us or that were mentioned in the family journal, my breath hitched. Dumbstruck, I stared for a moment.
Rumi knows things. His knowledge is about Fenestras. Spirit angels. Good Death. All synonyms?

“He’s right,” Tens concluded, flipping through the pages once, twice, and again.

“He really is.” Disbelief that we’d found someone, anyone, who could add to our knowledge of Fenestras settled into a tangible tension. Relief. Fear. Excitement.

Custos whined.

“He said there were writings, too, right?”

“Yes, but they’re not in English,” Tens cautioned, as he held a piece of parchment up.

“So, we have him translate it for us,” I said.

“That’ll mean trusting him.”

“We have to.” I sat staring at the art, trying to take in this revelation. “Let’s go find Juliet.”