MORTAL COILS (19 page)

“The
island, Robert,” Uncle Henry told him. “Take the northern route. No one is in
the mood for sightseeing.”

“Yes,
sir.” The boy driver turned around. The partition slid up.

The
car smoothly accelerated away from the curb, and Eliot sank into the padded
seat. Del Sombra became a blur of storefronts as they sped over rolling hills.
Black oaks and fields of sunflowers flashed by. They had to be going ninety
miles an hour.

Grandmother
sat unimpressed with this reckless velocity. “What are they going to do with
us?” she asked Uncle Henry.

Henry
flipped open a compartment. Within were crystal decanters and glasses. He
sloshed amber liquid into a glass, dropped in ice cubes, swirled, and offered
it to Grandmother.

Eliot
smelled the odor of alcohol and smoke.

Grandmother
didn’t even look at the proffered drink.

Uncle
Henry shrugged. “I have no idea what they’re going to do. They’ve never known
how to deal with you.” He toasted her and took a sip. “It’s really the children
that intrigue them—which, of course, you already knew, or why go to all this
trouble?”

Eliot
couldn’t stand it anymore. He’d been taught never to interrupt when adults were
talking, but they were talking about his sister and him.

“Who’s
‘they’?” he demanded, surprised how forceful he sounded. “You’re talking like
we’re not even here.”

Grandmother
quirked one eyebrow at this outburst, but otherwise appeared deep in thought,
digesting Henry’s words.

Uncle
Henry smiled at Eliot and Fiona and made a little “calm down” gesture with his
hands. He turned to Grandmother and spoke a language Eliot had never heard
before.

Fiona
cocked her head, listening with intense concentration. She was good with
foreign languages; maybe she’d decipher it.

Yellow
streaks outside caught Eliot’s attention. Beyond the tinted windows he saw the
orange-vermilion steel cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. The nighttime lights
of the bridge flickered on. The car sped through the automated FasTrak toll
lane without slowing.

More
time had to have passed than he realized. Had he nodded off? It had only been a
minute.

He
nudged Fiona and nodded outside.

She
stared, astonished at faraway Alcatraz island. She shook her head and
whispered, “Did we even slow down in San Francisco? For traffic?”

“I
. . . don’t remember,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Eliot
watched the Pacific coast race alongside his right, a steep drop into churning,
dark waters. It was impossible to tell how fast they were going. This car took
curves labeled with twenty-mile-an-hour warnings without a bump or slide and
passed other cars as if they were frozen.

Grandmother
interrupted Uncle Henry’s rapid-fire talk with her own alien-sounding words.

Henry
nodded and held up seven fingers. He ticked off one finger and spoke one word
for each as he did so.

Grandmother
grimly nodded.

At
the last finger he pointed at himself.

Grandmother
patted his hand and squeezed it.

This
surprised Eliot. Her gestures of affection were as rare as passenger pigeons—at
least toward him and Fiona.

Fiona
nudged him and nodded out the window.

Eliot
turned and almost jumped, because now they plowed through a snow-covered road;
granite cliffs stretched upward on one side, endless pine forests on the other.
The thing that made his heart pound in his throat, however, was the sun . . .
still ablaze on the horizon.

But
he’d seen the sun set in Del Sombra a few minutes ago; it had been night. There
it was, though, hovering along the edge of the earth.

“North,”
Fiona whispered. “That’s where they said we were going.”

He
understood what she meant, but it wasn’t possible.

During
the summer, the farther one traveled north, the later the sun set, sometimes
remaining aloft all “day.” For that to make sense, however, they’d have to be
where? Alaska? Past the arctic circle?

The
car slowed and turned right onto a dirt track.

He
strained to see more, but the sky darkened and fingers of frost spread over the
glass. Warm air blew from a vent onto Eliot’s feet and he wriggled his toes.

“With
that look on your face, I’d say you’ve become ranivorous,” Fiona said.

Eliot
tore his gaze from the window and looked at his sister. She tried to smirk, but
it trembled uncertainly on her lips.

He
appreciated the attempt to start a round of vocabulary insult, trying to spin a
protective cocoon of normalcy between them . . . on what was turning into the
weirdest birthday they’d ever had.

He
didn’t feel like playing, but he couldn’t help it, either. He wasn’t going to
let her just win.

“Maybe
I turned into an eater of frogs,” he replied, “because of Cecilia’s cooking.
Better ranivorous than larvivorous.”

Fiona
wrinkled her nose, so Eliot knew she got it. Larvivorous meant feeding on
larvae.

She
opened her mouth to reply, but said nothing. She instead stared past Eliot.

The
frost had melted off the car’s windows, and beyond was a lumines-cent curtain
of candy-apple red wavering against the night. Fringes of ghostly green flared,
and the entire display shook like a sheet of sparkling stars.

“Aurora
borealis.” Eliot spoke as if he were reading it from an encyclopedia. It was
easier to fall back on book knowledge because it always made sense . . . even
if the context was insane.

To
see the aurora, they had to be very north.

It
had only felt like fifteen minutes, but Eliot worked through the math.
California to the north pole? To travel that far they’d have to be going faster
than the speed of sound. He would have noticed a sonic boom.

They
watched the lights shimmer like a moonlit tide overhead.

Uncle
Henry switched to English and spoke to them. “Did you know there is an old
Scandinavian translation of aurora that means ‘herring flash’? The old Vikings
believed that schools of the tiny silver fish reflected moonlight into the sky
to create this spectacle. Even today some think they can see fish in the sky.”

Eliot
looked again to see if that was indeed what this aurora looked like, but the
silhouettes of mountains now blocked the view.

The
car wound along a serpentine road, made a right, and slowed, entering a town
lit with neon and pools of amber from shaded lampposts. The houses here were
old stone and plaster, jammed wall to wall, four stories tall, and on each
floor were picture windows reflecting a harbor and boats with jewel-like
lights.

Eliot
fixed upon a white sign with red letters: HOVERCRAFT FÂRJA I KM.

The
partition lowered and the driver asked, “The long way around, sir?”

“A
boat ride, I think,” Uncle Henry said.

The
car maneuvered onto a ramp and rolled past other cars waiting in line to board
a ferry. Uncle Henry’s car was waved ahead and parked on the prow.

The
boat cast off and powerful fans roared to life. From their forward vantage, it
seemed as if the car flew over the moonlit waves, only a slight pitch and roll
to their motion.

“That
sign was in Swedish,” Fiona told Eliot. “It said ‘hovercraft ferry.’ ”

“I
can see,” he replied, slightly annoyed.

Then
he understood what she was trying to tell him: they were in Sweden.

He
traced the only route that made sense. Up the coast of California to
Alaska—that accounted for the later sunset, then crossing the arctic circle and
down through Scandinavia—which explained the auroras.

That
trajectory fit the known facts . . . but it didn’t fit the laws of physics. He
touched the butter-soft leather seats of Uncle Henry’s car. This was a car, a
fancy, powerful car to be sure—but still powered by gasoline and limited by
ordinary thermodynamics.

Eliot
desperately wanted to talk this over with Fiona and see if she had come to the
same impossible conclusion.

One
glance at Grandmother and Uncle Henry, however, stifled any comment from him.
They placidly watched the water roll by, unperturbed by having just crossed the
world in an hour.

They
docked and Uncle Henry’s car rolled off first and sped onto a six-lane highway.
The limousine blasted past Porsches and Ferraris—flashing headlights so they
moved aside.

“We’re
almost there,” Uncle Henry assured them.

Eliot
glanced at Fiona and they shared the same unspoken question: where exactly was
“there”? He wasn’t sure he was ready for an answer.

The
highway turned into a two-lane road, then a single cobblestone lane winding
alongside white stone cliffs. More water appeared on his right, gray under a
colorless sky.

The
car stopped at a set of steel gates. Beyond was a park and a building that
looked like a museum. The gates parted and they eased onto the property.

As
Uncle Henry’s car moved closer, Eliot studied the architecture of the main
building: it had two wings and a dome of gold in the center. Scrollwork and
carvings of gods and spirits embellished its columns. It reminded him of the
Capitol in Washington, D.C., a little smaller, but somehow grander.

The
car halted. The driver hopped out and opened the back door on Grandmother and
Fiona’s side, offering his hand. Grandmother moved past him as if he weren’t
there. Fiona clasped his hand, smiled, and looked down.

Eliot
clambered out after Uncle Henry. “Where are we?”

“My
humble home,” Uncle Henry replied, inhaling deeply and spreading his arms wide
in a theatrical gesture. “Isola del Bianco Drago.”14

The
sea sparkled in the distance as the sun climbed over the horizon and left a
red-gold smear upon the waters.

It
was sunrise.

The
only way that was possible was if they were half a world away from Del Sombra.

The
bright light cleared the fog from Eliot’s mind. The dreamlike car ride and
everything that had happened since he got up this morning—those things no
longer mattered. He sensed something else was about to happen to him and his
sister . . . something bad. Like when Mike burned his arm.

“What
now?” he whispered to Grandmother.

“Now,”
she said, shielding her eyes as she gazed at the sun, “I suspect you will meet
your relatives. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

14.
Isola del Bianco Drago (Island of the White Dragon), aka Bianco Drago (White
Dragon), does not appear on any map or satellite photograph (although it is
referenced in several Post Family memorabilia). Though it is often suggested as
lying near Crete or Sicily, the Greek and Italian governments deny the
existence of this semilegendary island. Gods of the First and Twenty-first
Century, Volume 11: The Post Family Mythology, 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

13

BLOOD
AND LAW

Audrey
and Henry marched through a covered walkway outside his mansion. Seamless white
marble mirrored their steps so it looked as if they walked upon clouds.