The Prophet of Yonwood (20 page)

I dont know, said Nickie. She didnt want to talk about this now. She just wanted Crystal to hurry up. The car was going slowly around the curves. Crystal had turned on the headlights, but they brightened the spiraling snow more than the road ahead. Nickies neck hurt from craning forward, trying to see.

Love is love, seems to me, said Crystal. As long as what you love isnt armed robbery, or bombing airplanes, or kidnapping little children.

Can we go faster? Nickie asked.

Not without sliding off the road. Crystal shook her head. Were going to have to give this up, I think. Its dangerous. She slowed down even more to go around a bend in the road, and then suddenly she stamped on the brakes and the car slid sideways. Careening toward them out of the blinding whiteness was something big and yellow.

The bus! screamed Nickie. Its coming down!

Crystal pulled over and stopped. Behind the first bus was another one, and another, each one furred with white on top. They passed by and trundled on downhill.

But are the dogs still in there? Nickie said. Or did they let them out?

Crystal pulled the car back out onto the road. My guess is that those bus drivers didnt want to drive in this weather any more than I do. I bet they just dumped the dogs and turned around.

Then lets keep going! Nickie cried, bouncing frantically in her seat. We can find them!

Crystal drove on, but she was frowning at the road and going slower than ever. After about ten minutes, they came to a place where the trees thinned out, and on the right was an open field, lightly dusted with snow. Nickie could see a dark mush of tire tracks here. Stop! she cried. I think this is where the buses turned around. Can we get out and see?

Were turning around, too, said Crystal, but she stopped the car. Nickie flung the door open and jumped out. She ran toward the tire tracks and scanned the field. At the far edge, where the forest resumed, she saw something moving. A dogno, two dogs, or threeleaping across the snow-dusted ground, heading for the trees.

Otis! Nickie shouted, though the dogs she saw were too big to be Otis. Otis, Otis, come! Come back!

But the dogs disappeared into the woods. If they heard her at all, they paid no attention. It was just an adventure to them, a thrilling freedomat least at first. They didnt understand yet that there were no food bowls in the woods, no warm fires, no people.

Crystal came up and stood beside her.

I want to go after them, Nickie said. Will you wait for me? Ill just run across there and call Otis again from where he can hear me

Weve got a snowstorm starting up, Crystal said, and its almost dark. I cant let you go plunging around in the woods. Im afraid were too late.

No! cried Nickie. Its just over there, she said, pointing across the wide field to where the trees made a dark line in the distance. Otis! she screamed again.

But nothing moved out in the field, and the snow whirled faster, filling the air, until the trees had vanished behind a blur of white.

We have to go, said Crystal. Her voice was sad and kind.

All the way back down the mountain, Nickie said hardly a word. She sat staring through the passenger-side window at the tree trunks ghostly in the snow, knowing it was too dark to see anything moving among them, but unable to make her eyes look anywhere else. She felt as if a hundred stones had collected inside her.

Crystal pulled up outside Greenhaven. Im sorry about this, sweetie, she said. I just had no idea any of this was going on. How could I not have known it?

You were busy, said Nickie. With other things. She was so tired all of a sudden. She barely had the strength to open the car door.

But even after they got inside, Crystal kept asking questions, and Nickie kept having to explain things, and then they had to have something to eat, which Nickie wasnt hungry for at all, and Crystal had to talk about how strange it was that no word had come from the president about whether there was going to be war. It seemed like forever before Nickie could get into bed and close her eyes. And of course by then she wasnt sleepy anymore. She lay there thinking about Otis out in the snowstorm, cold and hungry and alone. She thought about the white bear, which might eat small dogs. She thought about Mrs. Beeson, who was trying to do good and was causing so much pain, and about Althea Tower, the Prophet, whose vision had started everything. And she thought about what she herself had done, and at that she buried her face in the pillow and tried not to think at all. I want my mother, she whispered, and my father. I want to go home.

CHAPTER 28 ______________

One More Trip to the Woods

In the morning, a white cloak of snow lay across the ground. Rooftops and tree branches wore caps of white, and from the bedroom window, Nickie saw that the mountainside had turned from gray to silver. The sun shone down on this white world and made it glitter.

It was beautiful. If she hadnt been so sad, Nickie would have rushed outside to make snow angels and snow caves. But she didnt have the heart for it this morning. Besides, Crystal had plenty of work for her.

Nickie begged Crystal to drive her up High Peak Road again so she could look for Otis. But Crystal said no. This was a busy day. Theyd never find the dogthe woods were vast, and besides, everything was buried in snow. And anyhow, theyd be leaving soon, and what would Nickie do with a dog?

Nickies orders were to clean out the nurseryput the lamps and furniture back where they came from, pack up the toys and games and other things, throw out anything old and useless. All morning she worked on this. It was awful not having Otis there. When she picked up his food bowl and his water bowl, a lump of sorrow rose into her throat. She put the bowls in a big plastic bag so she wouldnt have to look at them.

She was going to keep the picture of the Siamese twins. Crystal had told her she could have it, either to keep or to sell. Shed called an antique expert and asked about it, and he offered to pay $350 for it, sight unseen. But Nickie wanted to keep it, along with the cross-written letter. After all, these were among the few souvenirs shed have from this whole trip. She put them carefully at the bottom of her suitcase.

Shed asked Crystal if she could keep her great-grandfathers notebook, too. She felt as if hed kept her company, a little, while she was here in his house. Now she picked up the notebook and riffled the pages, thinking again about the mystery they contained. The professor had encountered a pool of sadness in the west bedroom, and he had seen something there, too, or thought he had. She sat down on the window seat and flipped through until she found that entry:

1/4 Extraordinary experience last night: Went into the back bedroom to look for the scissors, thought I saw someone in there, over by the beddark-haired figure, transparent swirl of skirt. Dreadful feeling of sorrow hit me like a wave. Had to grab the doorknob, almost fell. Figure faded, vanished. Maybe something wrong with my eyes. Or heart.

Reading this again, she remembered something: the long-ago death of a child, and the mothers grief. And the dates: January 4 for the death, January 4 for the echo her great-grandfather had felt. If thats what hed really felt, an echo.

Could it be? When the child died, the mother would have felt such a knife-like sorrow that it might have left a scar somehow beside the bed in the west bedroom, a scar so deep it could last through a hundred years and more. And the old professor, near death himself, might have felt it, might even have caught the merest glimpse of the grief-stricken mother as she had stood there on that awful day.

Or, thought Nickie, closing the notebook and staring outside at the light on the snow, maybe the professor had read about this tragedy somewhere and forgotten that he knew it. Maybe hed just imagined what he saw and what he felt. Or maybe hed made it all up to go with the theories of parallel worlds that he was interested in, those leaks between the past and present, present and future.

Had he really caught a glimpse of the past? Did the Prophet catch glimpses of the future? There was no way to know.

She put the notebook in her suitcase with the photograph of the twins and the crosshatched letter, and she went back to work on the nursery. When she was finished, the room looked just the way it had when shed first seen it: empty except for the rolled-up rug and the rocking chair and the iron bed, with a slanted rectangle of sunlight on the wooden floor. What would this room be when the new owners moved in? She hated to think of it filled with dumbbells and stationary bicycles. It wasnt meant to be that kind of room; she just knew it. It wasnt meant to be someones office, either, full of humming computers and gizmos with little flashing lights. It was meant for children.

After that, she went down to Grovers house to say goodbye. A snowplow had cleared the streets, pushing the snow in lumpy banks to either side. Already, the snow was starting to melt; trickles of water ran down into the street.

Nickie heard bits of conversation as she passed people. Mostly it was about the silence from the White House. No declaration of war. No declaration of peace, either. Just nothing. The nothingness seemed to upset everyone. They argued about what it meant. Good news or bad news?

Nickie couldnt worry about it. Her mind was full of so much else that the question of war seemed far away. She headed down Trillium Street.

No one was sitting on the porch when she got to Grovers houseit was much too cold. She knocked on the door, and Grovers grandmother opened it.

Hi, Nickie said. Is Grover here?

Down in his snake shack, said Granny Carrie. They came and took that thing off of him, she added.

Good, said Nickie.

That woman has her notions, Granny Carrie said.

Nickie figured she meant Mrs. Beeson. She wants the town to be perfect, she said.

In this life, said Granny Carrie, you dont get to have things perfect. Life is messy, no way around it. She beckoned Nickie into the house, and Nickie went down the hall and out the back door and across the slippery yard to the shed. Inside, Grover was stacking the empty glass cases.

Hi, said Nickie.

Hi, he said. For once he didnt make a comic production out of it.

I came to say goodbye, Nickie said. Were leaving the day after tomorrow.

Wish I was, said Grover. He put the cases on a lower shelf and started to spread out some magazines in the empty space. Did your dog get taken?

Nickie nodded. She still couldnt talk about it without crying, so she changed the subject. Did you find out yet if you won any of those contests?

Not yet.

I hope you did.

I probably didnt. Ill probably be stuck here forever.

You dont know. Anything could happen.

Grover made a round-eyed, open-mouthed, fake-excited face. Right! he said. All kinds of possibilities! I could get a great job waiting tables at the cafOr I could go be a soldier! Oroh, boythe world could blow up!

I dont think any of those will happen, Nickie said. Actually, it seemed to her that any of them might; but she could see that Grover was discouraged, and she wanted to cheer him up. I think youre going to get to go on your trip.

Hah, said Grover. Youre just saying that to cheer me up.

No, Im not, said Nickie, because an idea had hit her, a really good idea, and all at once she was telling the truth. I can see into the future, she said, and Iknow its going to happen.

Well, fine, said Grover. And youre going to be president of the world.

Nickie just smiled. Youll see, she said. Its been nice knowing you. And she walked back to Greenhaven feeling, for the first time in two days, a little bit good.

The next day the sun shone brightly again. Nickie stood on the sidewalk in front of Greenhaven and watched as a crew of burly men carried one piece after another of heavy, dark, carved-wood furniture down the steps and down the path, grunting and swearing, and heaved the beds and sofas and sideboards into the truck bound for the auction house. She saw the lamp go, the one with the parchment shade. The rocking chair went, too, piled into the back of the truck like a prisoner being carted off to jail. When that truck was full, another one arrived. This time the burly men went down into the basement, where decades worth of beds and chairs and dining tables were stacked on top of one another. It took hours just to empty out the basement.

When the trucks were finally gone, Nickie and Crystal wandered through the house. Their footsteps thudded hollowly on the bare floors, and their voices, when they called to each other from room to room, shivered with echoes. Strangely enough, though, the house didnt seem sad. Nickie had the feeling it was glad to be emptied out and unburdened. It was taking a deep breath of fresh, cool air, looking out through its clean windows, ready for whatever was coming next. Even Crystal seemed to sense this.

Really, she said, its a fine old place. Without all that ghastly Victorian furniture, its much improved. You could put, for instance, a white couch right there by the front parlor windows, and a glass-topped coffee table She held out her arm and tilted her head to one side, imagining it, and then wandered into the dining room. And then of course a total kitchen remodel. A slate floor would tone in well, and maybe cabinets in birch or white pine to lighten the look. She stopped in the kitchen doorway, and her arm dropped to her side. But what am I thinking? Its going to be Senior Haven. She sighed. Nickie sighed, too.

It was sad the way things had turned out. Losing Otis was the worst, but she hadnt achieved a single one of the goals shed set for herself, either. She wasnt going to live here with her parents after all; she hadnt fallen in love; and she hadnt done a single thing to make the world a better place.

Shed be going away from here next morning, probably forever, so she decided to go up into the woods and look for Otis one more time. And say goodbye to Yonwood.

With the last of her money, she bought herself a snack at the cafa bag of corn chips, two peanut butter cookies, and a bottle of grape juice. She put these in her backpack, along with a small plastic bag full of dog crunchies and Otiss food and water bowls, just in case. She set off up the trail and was soon in the woods, where the sun striped blue tree-trunk shadows across the snow. The sun was warm on her face. She walked with stubborn energy, and every five minutes or so, she stopped and called for Otis. But she heard no distant barkingno sound at all, except for the patter of melting snow dripping from the branches.