The Shells Of Chanticleer (30 page)

I was intrigued. We were almost at the very last second. Was there an option we hadn’t thought of?

He continued. “The truth is, I was never planning to let you get away. I am never going to stop watching you. Why don’t we leave it this way: give me your permission to decide how long we are parted. I can tie an imaginary string around you and then, when I don’t want to wait anymore, I can reel you back to Chanticleer with a simple tug. And because you are obviously so terrible at finding your way around the universe, I won’t have to worry about you losing your way again. I can’t promise to wait patiently but I do understand why you want to go home to your parents. It’s the same reason my dad keeps me close by now.”

“Would it still be painless?”

“I promise you will never know what hit you.”

“That sounds like it would hurt.”

“No, it will be perfect. Can’t you trust me? I was shot and bled to death but look at me now. I came through it all and came out on the other side. Trust me when I tell you not to be afraid.”

I put my fingers at the base of his throat, guessing that was where the fatal bullet had pierced him. I asked, “What was it like, at the end? Was it right here?”

He nodded. “Yes. It hurt, but it wasn’t the worst pain I ever felt. I don’t think about it as the worst thing to ever happen to me, just the last. All I remember is realizing that I was hit and then lying there, looking up at the sky and not having the strength to get away from the settling smoke and the smell of the gunpowder. My blood was warm and I could feel it flowing out of me. I knew I couldn’t stop it but I did not mind. I spent my last minutes hoping no one would step on me.

“My point is, Macy, don’t be afraid of how you go. Even the best and the brightest can have a bad ending. It’s one moment in a whole life of moments and when it passes you are freed.”

When he put it that way it was easy.

“I promised to trust you a long time ago, that night in the forest, remember?”

“You did.”

“That feels so long ago, doesn’t it? Back then I was only Macy. But now I am Marceline, too. Macy wants to live, to keep going, but the Marceline in me is tired of waiting.”

I wondered if he was right and whether I was crazy to let myself vanish back into the swirl of the universe. I thought of the lambs in the Prime Minister’s dome, about to fall off the cliff into the foaming ocean, and I felt the same way about falling back into ordinary time. Timing was everything and we were together now. Why was I adding another goodbye to my memories?

I had thought that because I pushed myself in Chanticleer, I had earned the right to a fearless, long life on earth. Crispin had said as much. Yet did I want to come back to Sebastian as an old woman? No, what an odd couple we would make then. I couldn’t see how that would work. I didn’t want that at all and I knew he didn’t either.

I’d come to understand the duality of it all. Dying young would be heartbreaking to the world around me, my parents, my friends, everyone who loved me. It never made sense when a young person died. I wouldn’t be able to tell them that I was okay. They would only see their side of the story.

They wouldn’t know that I was caught in a tug of war between two good worlds. They wouldn’t know how hard it had been for me to leave Chanticleer, or that I had chosen the girl in the hospital bed over Sebastian. They couldn’t see that it was love that was pulling me away from their world or know that there was someone young and beautiful waiting restlessly for me on the other side. Some of them weren’t even sure there was another side.

He read it all in my expression.

“I want to be clear here. You won’t remember this promise when you tip back home. You will be planning your future; you won’t be thinking that you want to die. But it isn’t real down there, Macy. It doesn’t last. This is what’s real. This is what lasts. And I want us to be young together here. Call me selfish for asking that of you but it’s what I want. So go back home for a few years … until you catch up to me in age…. does that sound fair?”

I hesitated, needing time to think. “Yes, I think so,” I stammered, “but uh, oh, I don’t know.” I was afraid to agree to such an irreversible decision. Then I remembered that Sebastian always did what he wanted, anyway. “If I said no, would it stop you?”

“Probably not.”

I realized it was futile to resist him, as futile as it had been to try and control anything that happened to me in Chanticleer. Sensing my discomfort, he absolved himself.

“I promise you, on my own I can’t do anything that isn’t ultimately right for you. If it’s not the universe’s plan for you, it will never happen, but I think we both know, deep in our hearts, that you and I are meant to be young together here. I’m not afraid to make the decision for us.”

So I gave in. It was with a strange excitement that we cemented our plan and I laid my future in his hands. Our souls had been pulling toward each other for years. We only had a little longer to wait before they could finally rest. I knew that between heaven and earth there was nothing to fear. That was a truth I hoped would stay imprinted within me when I tipped back, and that it would bring me peace. I could only wait and see. I might never know.

Sebastian was looking at me with amusement. “We are going to throw the biggest party when you return, you know that? Now I have something for you to remember me by. Hold out your hand.”

I did and he took from his pocket a silk pouch and shook its contents into my palm. I saw a sparkle of light as two earrings tumbled out. Tiny capital Cs encrusted with diamonds were nestled into a silver setting.

“These will tip back with you but you won’t remember me giving them to you. Here, let me put them in.” The posts slipped easily into the piercings in my earlobes and I fingered them, making sure they were secure.

Sebastian appraised them. “They look good. I like that it will drive you a little crazy trying to figure out where they came from.”

I chuckled. “So you are going to haunt me. Is that payback for when I made you fall in the bell tower?”

“Maybe,” he smiled.

I buried my head in his shoulder, wondering why it all had to be so complicated, so thrilling, and so exhausting at the same time. I wanted to shut myself away in that hut I woke up in so long ago, throw the fur cover over my head and, like a fairy tale princess, sleep for a hundred years. Closing my eyes on Sebastian’s shoulder made it all go away, if only for a moment. After a minute he nudged me.

“Are you awake? I am going to be in so much trouble if I don’t leave you now.”

I knew I had to let him go. I was good and didn’t cling when he gave me one last kiss and then took a step back and left me, but it wasn’t enough.

“Wait,” I called.

He turned back.

“Do something for me.”

“Yes?”

“Pull your hair back, as if you were putting it in a ponytail.”

He looked puzzled but did as I requested.

“Ah,” I said, “now I see the resemblance between you two. I wonder why I didn’t before.” He looked like a younger version of his dad.

I continued to stand there until he said, “Babe, stop stalling and open that door. It’s going to be okay.”

I saw him tuck his head down and quicken his pace.

I didn’t take my eyes away until I couldn’t see him anymore or hear the littlest trace of his footsteps, and then I waited longer, letting it sink in that I was finally truly alone in the dark, musty hallway of the Cornish Manor.

I stood outside the door for a minute, my hand grasping the cold metal latch, listening. There were no sounds from the other side. No clues to what lie ahead. I gathered my courage, wanting to get it over with, and opened the door. It was a scene so familiar to my heart, yet so out of place in Chanticleer that I gasped. It was the great room at my home. There were the sofas and the tall windows. What was happening? Had I tipped back home? Was this it?

I was back home, but something wasn’t right. It took me a minute to put my finger on it, but a minute was too long. There was a large, empty space over the fireplace. I turned around and directly behind me, blocking the door, was Balthazar. He was alive. He had legs, and he was looking straight at me. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

I don’t know what I thought I had achieved in Chanticleer in my time there. Whatever it was, it left me at that moment. I let out a bloodcurdling scream. I ran to the far corner of the room, scrambled on top of the sofa, and threw myself over, toppling awkwardly and landing hard on the floor, stuck between the back of the sofa and the cold brown wall. The space was tight; the sofa wouldn’t budge. I was safe there.

I froze and waited. I listened. It was quiet. No wait. I heard the heavy clop of the giraffe hooves, walking slowly across the room. Toward me. The steps stopped. I didn’t know what to do.

This was my nightmare.
How did Balthazar get here? And why had they put me in the room with him?
Then, when my mind stopped racing, I remembered the words. The first words from my first morning. Chanticleer is a benevolent place, though it might not always seem that way. Of course. This was coursework. This was my personal challenge. This was Paolo’s bridge across the gap. This was Poppy standing up straight. I wasn’t like Poppy. I was a Paolo.
If I can do this, then it’s truly over.
You didn’t get your final challenge until you were able to handle it.

I sat up a little, reminding myself of all my lessons learned. I knew I needed to face Balthazar. I needed to face him afraid. Just then I heard a crinkle in my back pocket as I moved. I stuck my hand in there and pulled out the wax paper packet that Sebastian had taken me to the warehouse to pick up. Every day I had put it in my back pocket, without fail.

“Remember you have everything you need,” he’d said when he handed it to me. Now I had nothing to lose. It was time to open it.

When I did I flashed back to the days when Balthazar first arrived at our house, and remembered the photos of the African safari, the tall acacia trees in the background. The same leaves were in this wax packet. I counted them, six, seven, eight, up to twelve green sprigs thick with leaves, still luscious and moist. I smiled in relief at my good friend who had given me the very physical thing I needed to diffuse my fear.

I stood up and faced Balthazar. He looked at me. I climbed over the sofa, moving slowly towards him and said softly, “Hello.” He dipped his head, slowly, calmly as if nodding back. I took one of the sprigs out of the packet and placed it on my upturned palm. I stood on top of the sofa cushions and raised my palm up to his lips. I waited.

Balthazar did nothing. We stood there, watching each other, waiting. Then he bent down and licked the leaves off of my hand with his warm, black tongue.

I eased down on the sofa until I was sitting. Balthazar knelt beside me. I took out another sprig and repeated the process. He took that too. He chewed it slowly, luxuriously, enjoying every morsel. He wasn’t put off by me, or by my scent. He didn’t run or shy away. Finally, when all the leaves were gone, he walked away to the other side of the room and stood there, staring at me. I sat on the sofa, watching him, unafraid, completely calm. I remembered Paolo whispering, “It’s over.” I did the same.

But Balthazar was not satisfied. He stared at me, and then he snorted. He stomped his foot, and stood up, pacing, back and forth, his energy too much for the room. Then he charged me. I scrambled off the sofa and fell on the floor. This was the angry Balthazar I knew existed. The one who wanted revenge, the one who wanted to burst out and get back to Africa. This is what I had always been afraid of. Flat on my stomach I tried to crawl away, to squeeze under the sofa, to find safety but he grabbed my blazer with his teeth, sinking them into the expensive wool, ripping the silky lining, and held on fast.

He swung his head and with one giant swoop he flipped me onto his back. Instinctively, I grabbed onto his neck and held on for dear life, my head burrowed into the hairs on his back, his gamey, animal scent filling my nostrils every time I inhaled, my eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see what was happening.

He took off running, finally getting his revenge, taking me away from my home just as he had been ripped from his. He hurtled his body through the plate glass window. The glass shattered all around me, shards landing in my hair and slicing into the back of my hands and into Balthazar’s backside, drawing droplets of blood, splattering it on my white Chanticleer sweater. It didn’t stop him. I opened my eyes. He ran down the valley toward the loch, and then he alighted and we were airborne, heading for the morning star that would guide him back to his homeland. Pure white light, it blinked steadily in the pink night sky, shimmering and then circulating, moving back and forth and up and down, around. No matter which direction it went, we were always headed right toward it.

Below me I could see the woods of birch surrounding the walls of Chanticleer, covering the earth with immaculate white tree trunks, row after carefully planted row. Balthazar never wavered or flinched, never stopped to think, but just kept flying straight ahead until we smashed into the morning star so violently that it burst open, splattering its hot white light everywhere, melting onto and then finally dissolving the Chanticleer sky into a plain white nothingness.

There was a terrible piercing white circle of light boring into my eyeball. Was I still staring at that eclipse? I felt a rough, dry pressure propping my eyelid open. I blinked reflexively and moved my head to get away.

“Macy, can you hear me?”

I opened my eyes to see the staff doctor with the black hair take his thumb off my eyelid. He switched off the flashlight he had been shining in my eye and stepped back away from the hospital bed.

I blinked again and then nodded my head, yes. They were going to sedate me. I wished they would get it over with already.

“She can hear us,” my dad said, and I turned my head the other way toward him. His voice was trembling as he stood over my bed. He grabbed my hand. There were dark circles under his eyes and he needed a shave.