The Keepers (34 page)

“Is that so,” the old man said evenly, not really asking. “Mrs. Hapsteade says that the Fel'Daera revealed a message. A message that turned out to be incorrect.”

“Yes. I thought it was from Chloe, saying she was safe, but . . .” Horace trailed off miserably.

“But it was a lie. A fiction.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what prompted you to look through the Fel'Daera in the first place?”

“Chloe was planning to go back home. I wanted to see if she would come back safely. I made her promise that if I saw a future that showed she wouldn't return, she wouldn't go in the first place.”

Mr. Meister made a low, thoughtful rumble. His great left eye roved across the box at Horace's side. “Did you believe she would keep this promise?”

“I . . .” Horace began. But no, he hadn't believed her. “She was very determined to go home.”

“Because of the malkund.”

Horace took a deep breath. He looked out the door in the direction Chloe and Mrs. Hapsteade had gone. “Yes.”

“I mentioned the malkund specifically when you were here last.” The old man spoke quickly, not raising his voice at all, but throwing the words at Horace nonetheless. “I asked you about it.”

“I didn't know about it then. Chloe told me later. She convinced me to go with her to take care of it.”

“And you thought this plan was best? Instead of waiting a single day, when you might have enlisted our help?”

“I thought—”

“And where is the malkund now?” Mr. Meister pressed on softly. “What was Chloe planning to do with it?”

“I don't know.”

“You allowed her to return home, despite having no knowledge of what she intended? Despite our warning?”

Horace threw his hands up. “I get it, okay? I get it. I screwed up. I looked through the box, and I saw the future wrong—”

Mr. Meister leaned forward and clasped Horace's shoulder. Horace flinched a little, but the old man gave him a suddenly tender look. “No, you did not see wrong. You saw truly.”

Horace studied Mr. Meister's face, his thin but encouraging smile. “I guess I did. Technically.”

“Just so. Technically, as you say, the future came to pass just as you saw it. But not as you
understood
it.”

“So I misinterpreted what I saw. That's just as bad.”

“Interpretation was not the issue.”

“Then what was? What went wrong?”

“Remember, Horace, that the circumstances in which you open the box have a direct impact on what the box reveals. At the moment you opened the Fel'Daera last night, you believed
deep down that Chloe would leave, no matter what you saw. And because of this belief, you helped set in motion a chain of events that
ensured
that she would leave. You saw—you created!—a message indicating she would be safe, a message that fulfilled both Chloe's needs and your own in that moment. Once the message was seen, Chloe was free to return to her family without breaking her promise to you, while at the same time you could take comfort in the idea that she would come to no harm.”

Horace took this all in, comprehension dawning. He had tried to use reason when opening the box, but he now understood that he had reasoned himself into a corner. “So it
was
my fault.”

“It is unwise to seek fault where the Fel'Daera is concerned.”

“What should I have done differently, then?”

“You should have trusted in yourself. You should have trusted in your friendship with Chloe. You should have measured the circumstances in which you found yourselves. And then . . .”

“Yes?”

“You should never have opened the box in the first place.”

Horace looked up into the towering red room, hardly able to bear to have Mr. Meister look at him now. But the old man continued, still soft: “You did not need the box to tell you it was dangerous for Chloe to return home. The danger was clear, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You had our express warning, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Need I say more?”

Horace shook his head, then turned at the sound of footsteps coming closer. Mrs. Hapsteade was returning.

Mr. Meister seemed to hear them too, glancing at the door. “Mrs. Hapsteade did the right thing tonight, despite her dislike of the Fel'Daera. She recognized the future you'd seen for what it truly was, and ensured that that future came to pass. Should you ever encounter such a moment again, I hope you will remember. But even more, I hope . . .”

“That I'll never encounter a moment like that in the first place,” Horace said.

“Just so.”

Mrs. Hapsteade appeared in the door. “She's resting. She is ready.”

The three of them went back up the path and entered a doba a hundred yards on. This one was equipped like a little apartment, with a table and chairs, one of them an old green recliner. There was a bookcase, heavy with books. Ingrid's doba, Mr. Meister had said, whoever that was—another Warden?

A huge old metal washbasin stood here too, full of water, water all around it on the floor. Chloe had gotten her bath. Washed herself clean—inside and out, Horace guessed. The blue-green cube from earlier sat on the table, somehow
balancing impossibly on one corner. It looked wet.

“Does that thing make water, then?” Horace asked.

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Hapsteade.

Chloe was nowhere in sight, but Horace heard hollow coughing overhead. He followed Mr. Meister up a ladder on the back wall, the metal rungs cold and slick in his palms. Mrs. Hapsteade called up after Mr. Meister: “Twenty minutes, Henry, and not a bit more. She must rest.”

Henry
, Horace thought. So that's what the H stood for.

Upstairs, Chloe lay under the sheets of a small white bed, looking extra tiny. Two candles had been lit, their flames wobbling on a shelf beside her. Chloe's green hoodie, black and charred and ruined, hung from the bedpost. Beneath it lay her shoes, laces burned to stubs.

“Keeper,” Mr. Meister said, bowing slightly.

Chloe looked blurrily at them both. She nodded. “Keepers.”

“How are you?” Horace asked.

“I'm okay.” She fingered the sheets thoughtfully. “I'm wondering whose doba this is. Ingrid, you said. That's a pretty name.” Abruptly her voice and gaze went sharp. “Where is Madeline?”

“Still at your aunt's,” Mr. Meister replied. “She is safe.” Chloe didn't ask about her father, a fact that struck Horace as ominous. What had happened to him?

Mr. Meister took a seat in the lone chair, leaving Horace to stand awkwardly off to the side. “Can you tell me of the
events of tonight? Are you able?”

Chloe sighed, sagging. “I am. But you won't want to hear it.”

“Rarely do I take the luxury of separating my wants from my needs.”

Chloe shrugged. “All right, then. What do you want to know?”

Mr. Meister leaned forward. The candlelight glinted starlike through the oraculum, sending sparks across his eyes. “Begin with the malkund.”

If Chloe was surprised that he knew about the malkund already, she didn't show it. “I took care of it,” she said calmly.

“Did you. May I ask how?”

“I melded it.”

“Melded.”

“I guess that's the word, I . . .” She looked at Horace, seeming to really see him for the first time. “I got the idea last night, when I was moving Rip through your window, Horace. I wondered what would happen if I let go of him, right when he was in the middle of the glass.”

Horace tried to picture it—two pieces of matter, suddenly trying to occupy the same space at the same time. It certainly wouldn't go well for Rip, and probably not the glass, either. Amazed and vaguely horrified, Horace said, “Wait . . . you're saying you put the pieces of the malkund inside something else?”

“Yes. In the metal beam of a boxcar in the train yard. I
went thin, put the pieces inside the sturdiest part of the beam, and then just left them there. I tried to see if I could get them out again, but I couldn't. They were fused together. Melded.”

Horace looked over at Mr. Meister. The old man looked genuinely shocked, gaping at Chloe with open mouth.

Chloe went on. “Oh, and I'm guessing the boxcar has left the city by now, too. Do you think that'll take care of the malkund?”

Mr. Meister closed his mouth. “In fact, I do. You were . . . very lucky.” Horace could tell that although the old man was trying to look stern, Chloe's deed had made an impression on him. For a moment his eyes were lit with an almost frightening intensity. But then he shook himself, recovering. “And what happened after the malkund?” he asked, his voice mild and polite. “You returned home?”

“Yes. I'd been at Aunt Lou's all day, had dinner with Madeline. I went back to my house a little after eleven, to check on my dad and wait for the malkund. But my dad wasn't there. When the pieces of malkund came through, I took them to the train yard like I said, and then came back to the house. I thought maybe the malkund might . . . call to my dad when it reappeared. Or whatever. I thought maybe he'd come back. But he didn't.” She frowned. “It made me nervous. I thought maybe the Riven knew what we'd done—with the malkund, I mean.”

“They did,” Horace said.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Meister grimly. “The gifts of the
Riven cannot simply be taken by force without alerting the giver. Had the two of you sought my help with the malkund, things might have turned out differently tonight.”

“Maybe,” Chloe said. Mr. Meister stiffened slightly, but didn't respond. “Anyway I was nervous, being back in the house, with my dad still missing. Something seemed wrong. I knew I had to get back to Horace's. And then I remembered that Horace had sent the raven's eye through the day before, so I went upstairs to get it, and that's when the Riven came in.” Her eyes got thoughtful, remembering. “There were three of them, I think. I heard Dr. Jericho for sure.”

“Yes, three,” Mr. Meister said. “Mordin often hunt in packs of three.”

“One of them started to come upstairs. The raven's eye was lying on my bed. There was still a little color left in it. I grabbed it, and I hid in the heart.”

“In the heart,” Horace said. “What is that?”

“Oh,” she said, waving a hand. She gave a sniffling laugh and another huge racking cough. “It's an old chimney that was completely walled off. Only I can get in. I used to hide there when I was a kid. I hid there from Dr. Jericho the first time he was in the house, too—I guess I told you.” Mr. Meister lifted his head and raised his eyebrow but did not speak. “It's totally boxed in, but a little bit of light comes in from above. I discovered it when I was little, going thin. And when I was little . . . did you ever play under the table when you were a kid?”

“Definitely not,” Horace said.

“Right, of course not. Well, you'd hate it in the heart, Horace. But when I was little, it was cozy. Safe. A place just for me.”

“Please,” Mr. Meister cut in, “what happened then?”

“Dr. Jericho came into my room. I'd used the dragonfly to get into the heart, of course, just for a second, but he must have felt it. So I sat in there and held on to the raven's eye. I heard the Mordin walking around, searching for me. They were talking. They were saying things—” She pushed her hands across her face, sagging. “Some of it I couldn't understand. They were speaking their own language. It sounded like . . . knives being sharpened. I just stayed where I was. And after a while they went downstairs, and I heard more talking, more noises. And then a little bit later I started to feel heat. I didn't understand at first, but then it got hotter. Much hotter. And a sound was growing, too, all around, becoming a roar—fire. So I leaned out and stuck my head through to see, and that was stupid—” She looked up at Horace, her face creased with worry and hurt. She glanced at the candles. “What you maybe don't know is that I can still feel certain things when I'm thin. Temperature, especially. It doesn't actually affect me, can't touch me—but I can still feel it. It feels the same as it would have. Worse, actually, I think.”

“I don't understand,” Horace said.

Mr. Meister rubbed his chin. “She means that while she is incorporeal, fire will not burn her, physically. Nonetheless,
she will feel all the pain of being burned. Her body would escape unharmed, but the mind—”

“Don't,” Chloe said. “Don't say it like that. You're right, it's all in my mind—”

“I did not say the pain was not real.”

“—and if I was really brave I could've ignored it—”

“Chloe, your bravery is not in question. When you rescued the Vora from the golem—”

“Oh, the golem, the golem. I wish people would shut up about the golem. I only did that because I didn't know any better. I didn't even know I wasn't supposed to be able to go through that shield thing, the dumin. But tonight, I did know. When I was—” Chloe cut herself off. She threw back the sheets and swung her legs over the edge of the high bed, where they dangled like a toddler's. She was wearing a long nightgown, white and old-fashioned, a couple of sizes too big for her. She pressed the heels of her hands briefly into her eyes and then let her head sag farther, her fingers burrowing into her singed and ragged hair. Her words fell like stones into her lap. “I peeked out of the heart. When my head came through the wall, it came out into fire. A cloud of fire. Nothing to see but flames. The flames were in my eyes. Actually inside them. In my mouth, my throat, my skull. In my veins. I screamed. I screamed so loud.”

She stopped talking. Her back heaved and several short, cruel barks left her—coughing or crying, Horace couldn't tell. Mr. Meister said nothing. Horace watched the candles sway,
tried to imagine the sensation of flames filling his eyes.