The Wand & the Sea (2 page)

But instead of falling under the bus's wheels, it rose like a feather on a breath of wind and wafted toward the center of the bus, where Holly slid her window open. The notebook slipped inside, hung in the air a moment, and dropped in her lap. The spiral binding was bent a little, but otherwise it was fine.

The kids stared gape-mouthed at Holly. But then she saw their internal logic kick in: A weird gust of wind had sprung up at the right time, and Holly had grabbed the notebook out of the air as it blew by. Brittany gave a pouty sneer and spun around in her seat so fast that her yellow ponytail trembled. Holly smiled. The ponytail yanked abruptly downward, and Brittany glared at the boy behind her, who put up both hands in surrender.

That was when Holly had realized that the key still had power, even outside of Anglielle, and what was more, she still had the power to control it. She went home and returned the key to her dresser drawer, closed up in the glossy wooden box Mr. Gallaway had given her.

She never brought it to school again, but she didn't need to. Anglielle was there waiting for her, and whenever she doubted it, she ran her thumb along the faint red line, a scar she had received last year in Anglielle that stretched along her palm.

Now, as she stood in the Hawkesbury woods, the line wasn't faint anymore.

Holly shook her hand as she hitched along the tree trunk, snagging her jeans every few inches over the gushing stream. The longer she waited to return to Anglielle, the more the old wound pained her. It had changed from a barely noticeable pink line to an angry red streak, and when she raised her palm, she saw a drop of blood.

She had made a blood oath to Bittenbender, the fierce leader of the Dvergar, to return to Anglielle. Now that she was within reach, he wasn't about to let her forget it.

The Dvergar hadn't realized she didn't need an oath to call her home.

The minute she crossed the stream, a beam of sunlight cut through the forest canopy, illuminating an enormous oak tree standing like a sentry in the midst of a glade ringed by beeches.

She wanted to hug it, though it was too broad for her arms to span. The key buzzed in its scabbard and she drew it out, closing her eyes. She stood in front of the oak's knobbly trunk.
Please be okay. Please.
She opened her eyes.

The lock was still there. And still broken.

Melted, more specifically. In the center of the tree trunk was an iron plate with the elongated, backward S shape that had once been a keyhole. It was the only way in to Anglielle, that magical place where Holly was actually
somebody
. Last summer she and Ben and Ben's friend Everett had stood here as Holly's key had unlocked the oak. She was glad the boys weren't here now. Ben would be prattling about nothing, and Everett would be questioning whether she knew what she was doing, when he was the one who couldn't be trusted.

At least, she never
had
quite trusted him.

But when she'd opened the oak, he'd stepped through it along with her and Ben. And by unlocking the oak, Holly had revealed the keyholes in the beech trees surrounding it. At least one of the five had led them to Anglielle.

But there were only four beeches now.

That was the problem. The fire that had warped the lock on the oak had consumed the beech-tree portal, too. Now Holly held the key up to the iron plate, willing it to fix the twisted keyhole. But Holly's marvelous key, which translated languages and could levitate sketchbooks, which could work
magic
—even that wonderful key only clanged uselessly against the ruined lock.

She had come all this way, and waited so long—put up with her mother's lectures and Brittany King and fractions with exponents—she
had
to get back where she belonged. Holly pounded the trunk with her fist and put her mouth up to the lock. “Let me in! I have to get back in!” she called desperately.

A blast of hot air shot through the keyhole. It glowed like molten iron, and she jerked away. A blister bubbled on her lower lip.

Somewhere, some
when
, Anglielle's Northern Wood was still burning.

But how could it be?

She walked away from the oak tree, stifling an urge to kick it, and approached the circle of beeches. None of them revealed their keyholes. Until she unlocked the oak, the portals were useless.

“Why won't you
work
?” she yelled, flinging the key into the grass.

She didn't see where it landed and she didn't care. What was the point of knowing magic if eventually it stopped working? It was the same in all the stories. Kids get older, the magic disappears. Peter Pan let Wendy go because she wanted to grow up.

Holly hated the ending of that story.

But didn't she still have magic? What about Charlotte's notebook, and the scar on her own hand? That was real enough. . . .

It was all explainable. Maybe a gust of wind
had
lifted Charlotte's notebook. Maybe she'd scratched her palm on the tree trunk across the stream.
You're going to need to grow up,
Holly's mother often said.
Start taking some responsibility
. Girls like Brittany King had put away their dolls and puppets long ago, and here was Holly, trying to unlock a tree with an old key. Why?

Because she didn't belong here.

As she stood next to the oak tree, where somehow suspended in time the Angliellan woods were burning, her world of locker jams and tardy slips and text messages faded away like part of a story she had read in a book a long time ago. The real world was ancient, truer, somehow. If she never returned to it, she would stay anchored to a place she had never really understood, knowing her home was just out of reach.

She laid a hand on the beech tree closest to the gap in the circle.

A hoarse screech startled her. The red parrot.

It perched on a low, fat branch next to her. And in its beak it held Holly's key.

Holly took a soft step in the parrot's direction.

It flapped its scarlet wings and screamed again, though it kept a firm grip on the key.

“I'm sorry,” Holly whispered, as if the bird could understand her. “There's a nice parrot. Are you someone's pet? I do still want the key. So why don't you just give that back to me?”

It was a choice, after all. A choice about what you decided to believe in. That sounded like something Mr. Gallaway would say.

“He's the one I should talk to, isn't he?” she said, trying to keep the parrot's attention while she stepped a bit closer. “He'd know how to fix the lock on the oak tree.”

The red bird blinked. It edged away from her along the tree branch.

“What does stupid Brittany King know about anything, anyway? The highlight of her summer will be finding toenail polish to match her swimsuit. That's right, isn't it, parrot?”

Holly's feet made no sound as she crept toward the beech tree, her voice almost as quiet. She cocked her head, keeping only one eye on the bird. She had read once that human eyes were threatening; fixed so close together, they were the eyes of a predator.

“I'm not a predator, am I?” she whispered.

Almost there. She could reach out and touch the bird now, but if she startled it, she'd never see her key again. Then a thought occurred to her.

“I have something even better than that old key,” she said. She reached slowly into the corner pocket of her jeans and drew out a quarter. “Look, it's all new and pretty.”

The bird's eyes flitted down to the coin in Holly's fingers, then back up to her face.

“It's all yours. Look, I'll just leave it right here. . . .” She eased her hand up to the branch and slid the quarter into a shallow knot. The parrot sidestepped away from her, hunched, and tensed its legs.

It was about to take off.

“No, wait!” Holly cried. Her hand dove into her pocket. Amazingly, the parrot paused. Hastily, she dropped a second quarter into the hollow. It was like dealing with a capricious vending machine.

“Caw,”
said the parrot softly, and dropped the key onto the ground.

Holly's shoulders sagged. The parrot snatched up the quarters and launched itself into the forest canopy. The sun glinted off its feathers, and Holly smiled, flooded with relief. She retrieved the key from the soggy grass.

She wasn't quite ready to give it up after all.

Everett Shaw stood in the back garden of Number Seven, Hodges Close. Glancing along the flagstone path through the spitting rain, he could just make out the hollyhock-covered arbor of Number One. He noted with satisfaction a plume of smoke curling up from the cottage chimney.

Holly and Ben had finally returned.

Everett opened the picket gate of Number Seven and peered into the screened-in porch attached to the house. He half hoped, as he always did, to find the oak chest that he had seen only once among the tables of seedlings and garden tools. It was the chest that held all of Mr. Gallaway's secrets, but Everett had never seen it after that time last summer, when he'd taken one of the large iron keys stored inside.

The key—the
wand
—that Avery had stolen from him.

Everett went through the porch and knocked on the kitchen door. It opened at once, as if the old man had been watching him through the window. He raised his bushy white eyebrows in question. “Yes? What is it?” he said finally, while Everett stood there, shifting from foot to foot.

“I . . . I brought back those loppers Mum borrowed from you.” Everett held up the pruners.

“Very well, just put them there on the table.” Gallaway jerked his grizzled chin toward the porch.

Everett did as he asked.

“Something else?”

“No, I . . . I guess not.” Everett glanced down at the oak table, at the rectangular shape in the dust. A shape big enough for an old iron chest.

The old man grunted. “I suppose you'll want a cuppa. Come in then, if you must. Mind you don't drip on the kitchen floor.”

Everett followed him into the cozy kitchen. Everett had grown almost an inch this year, and now he was a bit taller than Gallaway. The old man made a great show of assembling cups and saucers and teapot, as if he were being put to great inconvenience and didn't use them every day. He poured tea and opened an ancient-looking tin of shortbreads, pushing them in Everett's general direction. “So?” he said, his eyes looking a bit softer. “How is your mum? Feeling better?”

Everett shrugged. His mum wasn't ill, exactly, but she had her good days and not so good days. Sometimes she was all bubbly and flitting about the house and making puddings. She seemed quite cheerful when Everett had told her about the Shepards coming back to Hawkesbury. But this morning she had deflated like a leftover balloon. She'd gotten the post and there was no check from Dad, which was already two weeks late, and that always put her in a mood. “Okay, I guess,” he said to the old man.

“You give her that herbal tea like I told you?”

“Yeah, I think it did her good. She's run out now.” Everett pushed the shortbread around on his plate. He didn't know how to ask what he wanted to; it wasn't as if Gallaway really
liked
him. It was Holly he liked talking to, and she had only just arrived in the village. “Have you . . . I mean . . . been walking in the wood lately?”

“What, in this rain? Not fit for man nor beast.”

“I just thought . . . you know. Since Holly and Ben're back . . .” Hang it all, why did Gallaway have to be so hard to talk to? Holly said she'd told him everything about last summer, their time in Anglielle, Avery's betrayal, Everett jousting with the magic wand that had been one of Gallaway's keys. The wand Everett wasn't supposed to have in the first place. Maybe that's why Gallaway was so cross. He must know that not only had Everett stolen one of the magic keys, he'd lost it. Well, a prince had taken it, but it came to the same thing.

“I have not seen Holly, nor any of the rest of the family,” said Mr. Gallaway testily. He pulled out his raggedy red handkerchief and blew his nose. “I'd stay out of the wood if I were you. The stream is sure to be running high. Now, if you don't mind, Everett, contrary to popular belief, I
do
have things I ought to be tending to.” The old man stood up, plucked a small pouch from a cupboard shelf, and handed it to Everett. “Give this to your mother. And come round again when she's out.” Without another word, he grabbed his plaid cap and walked out, letting the door slam behind him. Everett was quite sure he'd done that deliberately.