The Steward (23 page)

“Why did you ask me about Chalen ... our caretaker?” I asked.

Her white skin flushed and she looked away from me. “It’s nothing. I was just trying to figure out how he got the present.”

She was hiding something—I could see it in her eyes. If she believed Chalen was human, she wouldn’t be telling me about missing rail sections and mysterious boulders. If instead she believed Chalen was something other than human, she might be in danger.

“Candace, even if Chalen did take the gift from her, what would that have to do with the wreck?”

“Oh, nothing, just making conversation,” she deflected awkwardly.

“No you weren’t—you asked for a specific reason. What are you thinking?”

She smiled like a child who’d been caught in the cookie jar. “It’s nothing Mags, just my superstitious nature getting the best of me.”

I let her drop the subject, and we drove back into town. She’d planted a seed, though, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was correct. There was something strange about all of it, from the boulder to the railing—even the failed airbag. Worst of all, she was suspicious of Chalen, even if she wouldn’t admit it to me.

On the way back to school, I considered whether Chalen could have been responsible for the wreck. It didn’t matter how I ran the possibilities through my mind, as much as I wanted to blame him, it didn’t add up. Sara had told me once before that the Unseelie clan had agreed to cause no harm to people for
unintentional
offenses—as far as I knew, Rhonda and Chalen never met. As heinous as she could be, she never had the opportunity to
intentionally
offend him. More importantly, I couldn’t imagine why Chalen would be interested in harming her—it was me he wanted to torment. As twisted as it seemed, I thought he would have left Rhonda alone if he believed harming her would be doing me a favor. If anything, having her mouth wired-shut would make my life easier.

Candace pulled her yellow MX-5 in next to my car. Before I got out, I tried to put her at ease. I didn’t know what to say, because I was balancing two very different problems. I wanted to make sure she knew I was there for her, but I had to keep my promise to tell her nothing. More than that, if she was curious about Chalen, I had to snuff out her curiosity before she did anything that might get her hurt.

“Candace, you know I love you, right? You’re the one person who’s been there for me every moment since I got here. If you want to tell me something, I promise I’ll listen, and I’ll try to keep an open mind. I know I seem a little skeptical about all of this ... stuff, but if you need to talk…”

She had a beautiful smile on her face. “Thanks Mags, I love you, too. Listen, sorry I wigged out a little on all this conspiracy stuff—I’m really not a black helicopter & tinfoil hat kinda girl. It’s all good.”

Stalemate!
After a quick hug, I slid out of the seat. I was concerned about her as she drove away, so I decided to ask Gavin and Sara about it. Candace was smart, tenacious and way too observant—I knew she wasn’t done and that worried me.

* * *

Back into my regular swimming regimen, I trained six days a week. Doug showed up only once after my party, but he didn’t swim. He talked to Coach Rollins for about ten minutes and disappeared. While they conversed, I noticed that Doug glanced over to me several times, but he left without saying a word. Coach Rollins later told us that Doug took a hiatus from the team to do some off-season weight training for football.

After hearing the strange news, I was sad and felt alone for the rest of practice. The oddest part was that I always felt alone when I swam in Florida, but preferred it that way. When I swam it was my time, a chance for me to be in the water and forget everything else. But swimming with Doug changed that and I hadn’t noticed it before.

Giving him space after my party, I thought, was the best idea. So my plan was to avoid him by not calling or texting. I didn’t want to make matters worse than they already were, but two weeks into my strategy, I missed him. It surprised me that he hadn’t called—I suppose I expected him to, and now that he’d stopped swimming, I never saw him. Candace mentioned that he’d been to the hospital a few times to check on Rhonda until Mr. Adair ran him off.

Enough was enough—after I left practice Saturday night I called him. It felt so good to hear his voice on the phone.

“Hey Havana, how are ya?”

“I miss you, Doug.”

“Yeah, I miss you, too … I…” I could hear him exhale though the phone.

“Listen, Doug, I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

“Why are you apologizing? I’m the one who’s been … weird.”

“It’s me, too. I haven’t called you because I didn’t know what to say, and with Rhonda…” I exhaled and decided to cut to the chase. “I want to see you, Doug.”

He paused on the other end for a long time.

“Hey, are you still there?”

“Yes, but I … I just thought you wouldn’t want to see me after … it was wrong, and all of this is crazy now…”

He was upset and hurting. I could sense it in his voice and I could picture it on his face. I knew why, too. He’d told me that he loved me, and I hadn’t said anything back. He was beautiful, really funny, and I did enjoy kissing him, but he was my friend. Nothing more. Telling him the truth seemed like a bad idea, because he was not himself at the moment. I fought to cap my emotions, especially the guilt. After a deep breath, I told myself that it would be fine and I focused on how much I liked being around him—how he made me laugh. It made me feel better and brought my confidence back.

“Doug, let’s meet and talk. I really want to see you.”

“Tomorrow night, then?”

“I can’t tomorrow. I have a … family thing,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable as I thought about the Air trial. “But some afternoon this week after school, and before I go to practice, we can go out on the boat maybe. In fact, I can pick you up. Monday, say around four o’clock, your dock?”

His voice was less stressed, and he seemed relaxed. “That sounds great. Do you know how to find it?”

“Yeah, Candace showed me your house this weekend when we were out … and you won’t be able to miss me—I’ll be the one trying not to crash a fifty-five-year-old Chris Craft into your dock.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. “So, Havana, you’ve been stalking me?”

We laughed through the phone and I felt the weight lifting off my shoulders. It was a relief that we would talk, because I needed to have Doug in my life—in some capacity. Since Gavin clearly didn’t share my feelings, saying as much on our drive Sunday night, it made it all the more important that I do the same for Doug. The sooner he understood that, the sooner we could go back to being friends, or at least that was what I hoped.

THIRTEEN

AIR

This morning, Aunt May announced that she was in desperate need of an evening at
Mike and Ted’s
—it would have been her fiftieth anniversary with James. She asked Mom and Dad if they’d take her and, of course, they both agreed. They didn’t really have a choice after Aunt May told them she’d already made reservations at 6:00 pm—for three. Mitch spent the night with a friend, and that left me with the Cottage to myself, though I knew I wouldn’t spend much time in it.

I wasn’t as nervous about the Air trial as I had been for the Earth trial, but that didn’t mean I had any confidence. I had none, in fact. Understanding how the elements fit together was as elusive as it had been in January.

As soon as the taillights of the big red Lincoln disappeared up the drive, I rushed into the Gazebo to study the signs again. The earthy, metallic scent of old stone filled the still air. It was a beautiful structure, really. The domed ceiling arched twenty feet tall, and the detailed stonework was amazing—the thick columns fit together so precisely, it was difficult to believe it had all been done by hand. The intricate stone mosaic of Aether in the floor was just as impressive. It must have taken months to carve each small colored stone. Dust motes floated in and out of the late afternoon light flooding through the glass and wrought iron doors in the south opening.

Sitting on the floor in front of the Air sign, I memorized every detail. Carved under a waxing quarter moon were the Gaelic words Oirthear, Aer and Spiorad—Spring, Air, and Spirit. Under the words, a triangle pointed up and, similar to the Earth symbol, was bisected across the lower third by a carved knotted line—the symbol for Air. The carving inside the triangle was beautiful, too. It looked like three legs made up of interwoven vines, all radiating from the center, each with a trailing segment at the end that looked like a wing. The tip of the wing extended into a narrow line that swirled into a tight coil, filling the voids between the legs. Aunt May said the upright triangular shape was a triskelion—a symbol for Air. Besides the opening for the Air stone, a sword, positioned above and outside the triangle, was another symbol for Air.

Studying the Air sign again didn’t help any more than the other times I’d done so. Clenching my hair, I looked to the right toward the Fire sign, my favorite in the room. Below a carved full moon and the words Deisceart, Tine, and Anam, was a triangle about the same size as the rest—two feet across. The swirling, flaming triquetra—a triangular Celtic knot—meant fire, as did the diamond-tipped spear symbol below it.
Summer, Fire and Soul—I’m not entirely sure what to do with those either.

My stomach tightened in reaction to seeing the last one, because images of Chalen always accompanied it. The Water sign was underneath a waning moon—representing fall. It was inverted and contained a three lobed symbol made up of three swirling lines that intersected at a small triangle in the middle. They looked like waves. At the bottom, in the center, was a circular symbol with a vertical line. The inverted triangle, Aunt May had said, was an ancient symbol for the element Water, just like the chalice symbol in the bottom.

Frustrated, I twisted back to the Air sign hoping for spark of clarity. Gavin found me there when he walked up the hill from the lake edge. He paused for a moment at the glass door, then “flashed” inside the room, disappearing and reappearing next to me so quickly it startled me a little.

“Sorry! The door was locked,” he said, smiling, a little amused by my reaction.

“No, that’s alright.”

“Are you ready?” he asked. His deep voice sounded confident and compassionate. It was reassuring, and I wondered if he was breaking the rules by bolstering my frame of mind.

“I suppose so. Do I need to take anything with me besides the green stone?” I asked, holding it in front of me. “Last time I had a backpack full of supplies.”

“No, you don’t need anything other than what you have in your hand.”

I unbolted the door and followed him down the path toward the tiny boat dock between Aunt May’s cottage and Sara’s. The sun was sinking in the evening sky and the handful of clouds I’d noticed this morning were gone—it would’ve been a perfect evening to do anything other than fail a trial. Gavin helped me into the small mahogany boat and untied the lines. He stepped quickly into the boat, taking his seat without making it rock.

The engine came to life, interrupting the sound of the tree frogs and the three-note song of the Katydids in the forest. I sat back and practiced my calming routine as we cruised out of the cove and past the first island. It was much larger than the second island and thickly wooded, just like the rest of the Weald. I’d not been this close to the island before—even when Candace and I had taken the boat out, I stayed well away from it, which I was sure irritated her a little. But on this trip I was next to it, and I realized that I couldn’t see past the ring of cedars—it was a natural and effective screen. A hill in the center of the first island rose seventy or eighty feet. In the summer, the interior of the island would be nearly invisible under the canopy of the oak and hickory trees. Except for the
No Trespassing
signs posted every fifty feet, it didn’t look like anyone had been on the island before.

We circled around the southern and western side of the second island. It was about five hundred yards long and not quite half that wide. A large rock promontory on the western edge rose twenty feet above the trees and formed a sheer bluff on three sides. Trees on the eastern side obscured the interior edge from my view. While there appeared to be trees growing on top of it, I could tell there was a large clearing. My gut told me that I’d find the Air sign up there.

Gavin piloted the boat across the northern shoreline where he pulled up to a rock outcropping. To the left, the shoreline was steep, with only about ten or fifteen feet of distance between the trees and water. Everything past the shoreline was heavily wooded and snarled with underbrush. To the right, the lake came right up to the bluff line, making it impossible to walk in that direction. The promontory stood above the bluff. The top looked to be about forty or fifty feet high. I looked back to the east, where the shoreline continued around the end of the island and out of view, and wondered whether I should go that way. My gut said no. Directly in front of me, a trail led to the interior, and possibly, I hoped, to a way onto the promontory.

Gavin tied the boat to the rock out-cropping and promised he’d be back when the trial was over. “I don’t think it’s against the rules to tell you that there are no wild animals on the island.”

He walked down the path and disappeared behind the first boulder. It startled me when he vanished, but I was glad that he at least left the boat. The sun sank lower in the western sky, but it was still well above the hills. For just a moment, I again debated whether I should look for the sign down the shoreline first, but my gut told me to climb.

In front of me was a sign that read
No Trespassing
,
No Hunting.
It was nailed to a Red Oak,
Quercus rubra
, I said to myself. Regardless of whether I passed the Air trial, I
was
learning tree names. I followed the path into the island. After about thirty feet, it ascended as it cut through the oaks, hickories, and the occasional cedar. Thick moss blanketed the path—soft under my sneakers, the moss made my steps seem even quieter than normal. Scanning the forest, I looked for a clear pathway up the hill toward the bluff line above.