Across Carina (26 page)

“What would you do with gold?” Sal inquired.

“It’s valuable on planets other than your Earth.”

The driver leaned over the side of the chariot to snatch a watch he’d almost missed. His weight tipped us thirty degrees, and Sal and I gripped the walls and each other. The driver inspected the watch with a “hmm” before tossing it back.

“Not good enough for you?” I snapped.

He didn’t say anything. He was focused on something behind me. His pupils swelled, and I turned to see an incoming wallet. The driver reached over my shoulder for it.

“You’re not going to find
gold
in a wallet,” I said, barely moving out of his way.

He ignored me as he nosed through the wallet with his grimy fingers. He found a driver’s license, two credit cards, a library card, and a coupon for french fries. The wallet also had a zipped compartment in the back, which the driver then opened. He pulled out a wad of cash and smiled.

“I knew it,” he said, waving the cash at me.

I rolled my eyes. It was doubtful his travels would ever take him anywhere that he could use the cash.

“You realize that’s not gold, right?” I asked.

The driver tossed the wallet and stuffed the cash in his pocket, muttering something about having his “reasons.” Then he turned his back to me. It seemed that his search for gold, or whatever he was looking for, had officially resumed.

For the next while, as the driver searched—and abruptly reached for items without warning—Sal and I shifted from side to side of the chariot to keep us all from flipping over.

There had definitely been another child in Carina, I noted, as we passed a stroller, a bottle, and then a picture-book version of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
. I leaned over for the latter when no one was looking. It was my favorite book.

Sal stared at the passing objects, but he didn’t reach for any of them. He had been quiet since our conversation about Earth and his sister, about his future that he had once surrendered. Albeit modified, that future remained, and I knew that Sal was mulling it over between the pillars of serendipity and shock.

While flipping through my book, I came across the
Pig and Pepper
chapter, in which the baby screams as the cook hurls dishes across the kitchen. That pink-faced baby kept swirling through my mind, and I scolded myself for not having taken it with us before. I had left it to cry itself to death.

By this point I had reached a semi-delusional state. Both my mind and my body were exhausted. I must have been verbalizing half of my thoughts, because the driver interjected that the baby wasn’t dead and that in The Course of the Lost everything was preserved. I demanded that we go and find the baby at once, but he refused. I leaned against the wall and stared, realizing that I had now left not one, but two people in my lifetime to die—Garrett and that baby. Three if I included Aswin.

Three too many.

Sal pulled on my arm. I looked, and he was pointing at an outfit circling in our direction. It was comprised of a pair of red pants, a white tank top, and a denim jacket. But there were no shoes.

I frowned at my toes, which were shriveled and dirty from Lendon. I missed shoes. Nonetheless, I accepted the outfit that Sal had found me. It was likely the best I was going to get.

I changed while he and the driver tried to face away in our cramped quarters. I didn’t want to know how an entire outfit had ended up in The Course of the Lost, and I didn’t ask. The tank top was a bit long, and the pants were tighter than I’d have liked, but I didn’t mention it.

“Very patriotic,” Sal said of my outfit.

Then he turned to the driver. “What sort of government is on Perunda, anyway?”

“That depends on where you go,” the driver said.

“Is Perunda large?” Sal asked.

“It’s comparable to Earth. Both were made by El.”

“Well which part are you taking us to?”

The driver grinned. “You’re a curious lad. Don’t worry. You can trust me. This will be the highlight of your existence.”

“Well that’s ominous,” Sal whispered in my ear.

I shrugged. “Everything’s ominous out here. Let’s just find you some clothes and leave.”

Assembling an outfit for Sal proved to be more difficult. We did find him a light gray button-down, but after that the options grew scarce. A few pairs of pants floated by, but they were either far too big or too small. After a while, we found some black jeans that fit Sal decently. Then a pair of low-top shoes appeared, but they were too big, so Sal had to tie them in triple knots.

I asked our driver why there were so many clothes, and he mumbled something about a nudist planet. I knew that he hated my questions.

He paid little attention to Sal and me as he rifled through wallets and turned the chariot sideways at the sight of anything sparkly.

Sal looked almost as occupied as I watched him reach for a baseball bat.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“You never know,” he said, and I considered what sorts of people we would encounter on Perunda.

After what felt like an entire day, our driver hadn’t found anything else that pleased him. He groaned and said that he would fly us to Perunda.

However, as we neared the planet, I recognized a glittering ball of gold.

“That’s The Mango Sun!” I screamed.

I knew that it wasn’t a ball
or
gold, but from far away that’s how it looked. It was a tantalizing lie.

As we flew closer, the planet stretched into its mango form, and its skin of red, orange, and green came into view. My mouth watered in hungry fear.

The driver looked at me. “To your detriment, I didn’t find anything in The Course of the Lost. But Charlotte will reward me for returning you, and with a friend no less!”

“I thought you weren’t loyal to anyone!” I shouted.

“That depends on what you’re offering,” he said with a laugh.

I seized the bat from Sal and swung it at the driver’s head. He ducked, but his back received a sound blow when he thought I wouldn’t swing again.

He growled and whipped his horses toward The Mango Sun. They pulled us down in a tizzy.

It was a long tizzy. The driver suddenly flung his whip out into space. It formed a line and then boomeranged back, wrapping tightly around the chariot. The driver flicked his wrist, and we spun like a top. I had no clue what I was seeing or which way we were headed. My mind was draining with every rotation, and it seemed a speechless Sal’s was, too.

Just as we stopped spinning, the driver pushed hard against one side of the chariot. Sal and I fell out—and down we tumbled into The Mango Sun’s atmosphere.

Sal landed first. As I was still falling, he bounced off something and met me in the sky. Then we fell together onto a mushroom, slamming into each other and hitting the ground.

Our wails echoed off the underside of the mushroom as I lifted my face out of the dirt. The mushroom was as tall as me. I propped myself against its stem and tried to catch my breath.

My stomach growled. I wouldn’t last much longer without food. I plunged my hand into the stem and took a piece of the mushroom. I ate it, but it wasn’t enough. I would digest my own stomach if I didn’t eat more. So I snatched another piece.

Sal watched me a few seconds before following.

“It’s delicious,” he said, “but it doesn’t taste like a mushroom!”

We were both still breathing hard from the fall, but we kept eating. We tore ravenously into the mushroom, its spongy meat caking our fingers and jamming beneath our nails.

“What is this?” Sal asked, his mouth full.

I said, “It tastes like—”

There was a long pause as our chewing slowed and our thoughts resurfaced.

“Mangos,” we finished in unison.

Sal spit, and I shook my hands clean.

We started to back away from the mushroom, but we ran into another. So we backed away from
that
mushroom, but we hit a third. Finally, we stood up to behold an endless field of mushrooms. There was nothing else to be seen.

“Wait,” I said. “It’s not real. This is all in her head.”

“Indeed,” a voice boomed.

Sal and I turned around to find Charlotte walking toward us.

Sal gasped at the sight of her. Slowly, I took his hand, and we watched her come.

She looked the same as before, with her long golden hair in loose waves and her emerald eyes that knew thoughts. I tried to occupy my mind with trivial things, like how to play Hearts.

I didn’t know what had made me think of the card game. It had been days, perhaps weeks, since I had engaged in the activities of Earth. How simple it suddenly seemed to go to work and school, to play games and sports.

Charlotte was still wearing the same long-sleeve white dress that I had seen her in before. I found my eyes wandering to her exposed neck. It was so smooth and fair. She entranced me, possessed me.

The queen of diamonds is the worst card to have. Or is it the queen of spades?

Charlotte smirked. She was eyeing my feet, even though hers were also bare. She waved her hand, and a pair of white shoes appeared on the ground beside me.

“Thank you,” I said, putting them on.

I hadn’t blinked for a full minute.

Charlotte leaned into me and began to play with my hair. My knees immediately weakened. It was strange to feel myself being lured in by her and not be able to resist. Like standing in two places at once.

But I knew I needn’t fear. I had battled gods and creatures and could summon a chariot in a galaxy once foreign to me. Charlotte wasn’t so scary.

Invincibility poured over me, and I smiled at her. Sal hadn’t said a word, but he was watching us.

“Why have you come?” Charlotte asked.

She was looking at me, but her lips were unmoving. I wondered if only I could hear her or if Sal could, too. If she could speak directly into my mind, it seemed reasonable that she could speak into his at the same time.

“To learn about you,” I said.

Charlotte pressed her forehead against mine. My heart skipped a beat, and I felt Sal’s hand slip away. I knew that Charlotte was going to read my mind. I tried to focus on images of her, but somehow my thoughts rewound to her childhood, which I had never known.

There she was, a girl of six. She was standing in a rainy meadow in brown buckle shoes. She had on a white dress with sleeves faintly puffed and a hemline at the knees. There was wind all around her, but her curls did not move. She gazed into me, terrifying even then.

The vision ended as Charlotte pulled away from me. She motioned for Sal and me to follow her.

As we walked, the mushrooms faded, and her wooden cottage with the mirror entrance appeared.

“Is Eden here?” I asked.

“Eden?”

Charlotte repeated his name several times as if she had forgotten her brother.

Then, finally, with a lofty sigh: “I imagine he is on The Blue Planet, where he belongs.”

At the mirror, she held out her hand. I took it, and Sal took my other hand. Then our chain disappeared behind the mirror and into Charlotte’s house.

I had not expected to enter Doctor Pine’s secret room. I knew that it wasn’t the same room, but it was an exact replica. Or maybe the room in Doctor Pine’s house had been the replica.

Charlotte, Sal, and I stood on the ledge of the glass floor overhanging the pool. Seating areas with plush pillows, chairs, and buckets of paint flanked the pool, but it was the back of the room Charlotte was fixated on. The same Ouija board that I’d seen at Doctor Pine’s was on the floor in a circle of lit candles.

Charlotte flew across the pool to the board and told us to join her. I removed my jacket, thinking I’d have to swim to her, but to my surprise, I was lifted off the ground.

Using only her mind, Charlotte began to pull Sal and me to her. As I was pulled, I let my toes graze the water. It was warm and flowed through my legs and chest and into my heart. I caught myself smiling at Charlotte, but she didn’t reciprocate. She eyed me from the back of the room, and just when I felt utterly weightless, she flicked her wrist—almost imperceptibly, but I saw—and I plunged into the pool.

She retrieved me just as quickly, and I arose choking. She set me and Sal down at the edge of the pool, and I tossed my head about, trying to clear my ears of the water. But it was my mouth that the water came out of—all over the carpet.

Charlotte ignored my gaffe and ordered us to join her at the Ouija board. I didn’t make eye contact with her right away. Her message was clear: I had only made it across the pool because she had allowed me to. I was in her world, over which she possessed the sole control.

The three of us sat in a triangle between the candles and the board. I faced Charlotte, but kept my eyes averted—focused on the candle behind her.

“Charlotte, why are we here?” I asked, finally uttering her name.

“I thought I would tell you my story in a familiar setting,” she said. “And I wanted to remind you of why you came to me in the first place.”

“Then tell me,” I said. “Why did I come?”

Without meaning to, I let my thoughts retreat to the memory of Doctor Pine’s room. I had followed that green spot in hopes of something more. Wasted and wanting, I had craved an escape to somewhere I could be whole. But the chariot had not been the answer. Charlotte was not the answer. For I had left a part of myself on Earth.

Charlotte didn’t acknowledge my question, and when I shook myself from the memory, I saw that she was staring at me. She knew that I knew why I had come.

Sal remained quiet as ever, and I worried. He was either entranced or terrified. He had protected me many times before, and now it was my turn to protect him.

“If I’m going to listen to you,” I told Charlotte, “I want Eden here.”

“I already sent for him,” she said.

I had
not
heard her summon Eden. I tried to say this, but for some reason I couldn’t produce the words.

Charlotte began to crawl to me in a slow, steady way. When she reached me, she drew her finger from one side of my lips to the other. Then she pinched me hard, and her fingers fused into a needle that pierced through my bottom lip. The needle pulled thread into my mouth and up through my top lip, stitching my lips together.