When Autumn Leaves: A Novel (24 page)

Piper’s books had given her quite a bit of notoriety, although really it was more like cult status than actual fame, which suited her just fine. She had actually been surprised when the first book had done so incredibly well. There were nine books in all, and though Piper’s publisher and agent begged her to try and finish another, to wrap everything up in a neat little package so the children reading would have some sense of closure, Piper declined. They had offered her a ridiculous sum of money to write a last installment, and she was tempted. Ultimately she decided against it for two reasons. The first was that she didn’t want to spend her last few months working instead of being with the girls and Will. She also felt there was a lesson in leaving off without a definitive end. Endings in real life rarely come about with every question answered. People change, people leave, people get sick. Piper felt she was making a statement.

She almost never gave interviews, though she tried to answer fan mail whenever possible. She didn’t want her own personality to affect how people interpreted her stories. But in June, a well-respected magazine contacted her about doing an interview and she surprised herself by accepting. Her ego had gotten the better of her.

A reporter would come round on August 24th to spend the day with her. She’d forgotten the date over the last several confused weeks, but when it came and she saw the note on her calendar—interview with Charlie from
The Review
—she found herself inexplicably excited, energized. She dressed in a pair of soft, black sweatpants and a longsleeved orange shirt made from Indian cotton. She certainly wasn’t looking her best, but at least she didn’t look horrific, either. It was no secret that she was ill; in fact, that was the main reason this woman was there to begin with. But Piper didn’t want to come across as pathetic; she didn’t want to see her fragility in bold black print for the whole world to bear witness to.

At 9:00 a.m. sharp the doorbell rang. Piper was surprised at the woman on the other side of the door. She was so young and small-boned that she looked like she could have been a friend of Sylvie’s. “Piper? Hi, I’m Charlie Solomon.”

“Hi, Charlie. Come in, please,” Piper said as she gestured the woman into her house. She had been hoping that whoever would be doing the interview would have a little more life experience. How could this young person possibly capture what Piper was going through?

Charlie caught her eye and must have interpreted the look on Piper’s face. “I suppose you thought I’d be some fierce old bat, huh?” she said through a big grin. “I promise I’m older than I look. Good genes.”

Piper lead the tiny woman down the hallway and toward her back porch, still not quite sure what to make of her interlocutor. “If you don’t mind, just how old are you? Or is that rude? I’m sorry, it’s just that this is very important to me.”

“It’s not rude at all. Let me just get some of my credentials out of the way; maybe it will make you feel a little better. I was a Rhodes Scholar, I got my journalism degree from Brown. I worked for the
New York Times
before I got this job, and I’ve traveled and reported from over seventeen different countries. I am also a mom. I have a one-year-old son. Does that help? I really want you to feel comfortable.”

“It does, yes, and I’m sorry. I just . . .” She felt stupid now for questioning her, and looking at her more closely, she saw that Charlie carried herself with a grace and ease that only comes with years. “Please, sit down. Can I get you anything to drink? Coffee, tea?”

“No thanks, I’m fine for now. I stopped on my way over at this great little coffee shop.” She tapped her fingers on the table, thinking. “Hallowed Grounds. That’s what it was called.” Charlie began to rifle through her bag as she spoke. “This is a remarkable town you have here. It seems so, well, it seems really familiar somehow.” Charlie finally found what she was looking for, a small recording device that she placed lightly on the table. “And it’s not because it’s like every other small town. I don’t mean it that way. But . . .”

Piper smiled. She knew this story already. “You don’t have to explain it to me, Charlie. I’ve heard people say the same thing for years. It’s a special place, but it’s not for everyone.” She felt unexpectedly at ease with Charlie; normally she didn’t like journalists. But Charlie’s whole demeanor was so open that it made Piper want to open up, too. “So where is your son now?”

“With my sister,” Charlie said happily. “She’s quite a bit younger than me, and she’s my nanny this summer. I don’t really like to travel without Jesse, I miss him too much.”

Piper nodded her head. She understood that feeling all too well. “Does your husband mind? You two being gone so frequently?”

There was a small little beat, a silence just long enough for Piper to count two or three ticks from the clock on the wall. “Oh, I’m not married,” said Charlie finally, casually, as she fiddled with the littler recorder. “I hope you don’t mind if I use this. I just don’t want to get anything wrong or out of context.”

“No, not at all. I’m sorry I asked, I just assumed . . . You must think I’m terribly provincial.”

“Not at all.” Charlie shrugged and smiled that broad smile of hers again. “Please feel free to ask me anything you want. It’s only fair, considering how much I’m going to be asking you today. I wanted a baby, but not a man, if I can be so blunt. It’s an awful lot of hard work, to be honest, but worth it. You have two daughters, right? How old are they?”

“Twelve and seventeen. My oldest, Sylvie, is going to be a senior this year,” Piper said, smiling as she thought of them.

“That must be great. I can’t wait for Jesse to grow into himself more, you know? I can’t wait for him to be able to communicate with me. You must be at the point where the girls are your friends. What’s that like?” Charlie casually flipped a button on her recorder and set it down between them.

Before Piper could answer her, she felt that odd tilting, that shift telling her she was going to go. She looked at Charlie. It had never happened before when another person was present. Out of all the people in the world to do it in front of, a reporter! Piper opened her mouth to say something and took a step forward. But instead of walking towards her, she found she had walked into the forest.

Piper cleared her head. She would deal with Charlie later. For now she had to try to follow Autumn’s instructions. She took a deep breath in, like her friend had said. She fought the sideways feeling of going back home. Stay, stay stay stay, she said to herself like a mantra. Sure enough, the disorientation she felt when she was about to move again left her. For the moment, she was there.

She didn’t know quite what to do with herself. So without thinking she began to walk. Wherever she was, it wasn’t Avening. The forest was greener somehow, lusher and louder than any forest she had ever been to. Some of the tree species she could have identified, but some she was sure didn’t exist in her world. Leaves grew in the shape of stars, fat, blue flowers ringed trunks, fruit hung low and heavy off branches. The place felt right but unfamiliar. And then, out of nowhere, a little girl stepped from behind a tree so massive its trunk was wider than a car.

“Hello,” the girl said happily.

“Hello,” Piper said, trying not to show how startled she was.

“You’re from home, right? That’s so cool, I thought I was the only one who came here. I’m Maggie.” The girl was smiling. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, but bad people aren’t allowed here, so I know you’re not going to kidnap me or anything.”

“I’m Piper,” she replied. Piper had found, over the many years of writing children’s books and meeting many of the kids who read them, that some children were just special. And this child was. “Maggie, can you tell me, how did you get here? Do you know?”

“Um, I dunno. I think there must be some kind of special door or something in my backyard. That’s how it started. But now I just think about this place and I’m here. Is that what happened to you?”

She sure was a cute little thing, with blue-grey eyes and a blonde bob. She had the features of a girl who would soon be striking. She was maybe ten, or eleven? Probably ten, definitely younger than Shiv. Piper knew she needed not to stare, to keep it casual or Maggie might become guarded, so she smiled as brightly as she could before answering.

“Not quite. But wait. You said there were no bad people here. But there are . . . people?”

Maggie squinted one eye. “Sort of, yeah. Not like normal people. But they’re really nice.” She pushed some hair off her face with one hand. Piper noticed she was clutching a notebook in the other. “My best friend lives here. He’s super cool, for a boy. We have a fort.”

Piper surveyed the forest around them, turning her head slowly. On some level she was afraid of becoming nauseated if she moved too quickly. “And . . . Maggie, what . . . what do you do when you come here?”

“All kinds of things,” Maggie told her. “I play with Dade. That’s my friend. Or if he’s busy, sometimes I play alone. Or do homework.” She held up the notebook for Piper to see. “Today I’m writing a letter to Ms. Avening. She’s having a contest, and the winner gets her magic book. Dade thinks I could win it, maybe, so I’m trying to write a really good letter.”

“Wow,” Piper said, having the presence of mind, even here, to smile encouragingly. “That sounds like a really cool project. Good luck on your letter.”

“Thanks.” Maggie smiled largely, revealing two missing molars. “Oh! I’ve got to go. Time moves different around here, you prob’ly know that, right? I’ve got to go in for lunch.” Maggie smiled and walked forward and then disappeared before Piper’s eyes.

Could it be that easy? Piper closed her own eyes and concentrated on home, on the exact place she was when she left. She wasn’t really expecting anything to happen. She expected it to be more difficult. But it only took a moment or two, and when she opened her eyes again, she was back. Piper was shocked. It had worked.

Charlie stood there wide-eyed. Unsurprisingly to Piper, Autumn was there with her.

“Ah, there you are dear. See, Charlie? I told you she’d be back.”

“Did you feel a disturbance in the Force or something, Autumn?” Piper said dryly. “It’s pretty coincidental that you’d show up at this exact minute.”

“Hardly. I was in the neighborhood and I decided to drop by. The Goddess does indeed work in mysterious ways.” Autumn chuckled. “Lucky I came by. You’ve been gone more than an hour, and I’ve been having a lovely chat with Charlie.” The older woman looked at the young reporter conspiratorially. “She’s thinking of settling down in Avening, she’s taken such a fancy to it. Haven’t you, Charlie?” Charlie opened her mouth, but looked a little too thunder-struck to reply.

“I was . . . I was missing for an hour?” Piper had never been observed in her going missing before; she hadn’t been clear on how this worked. Somehow she had imagined the other world as a blip in time, something that happened mostly in her head and self, not something that coordinated with the real world. “So wait, my body wasn’t here at all? For an hour?”

“Your body was definitely gone,” Charlie piped up, her eyes still wide and round as if she was afraid of what she might miss if she blinked.

Piper looked at Charlie and swallowed. “So you saw me . . . you saw me evaporate and then reappear an hour later. That’s what happened here, in my kitchen.”

“Now don’t look so worried,” Autumn broke in. “Charlie has agreed that this will be our little secret. Not that she had much choice. It would be rather hard to get anyone to believe her story, I think.” Autumn was quite animated; she was at least as excited as Piper or Charlie about what had happened. “It’s most curious that Charlie was here though, isn’t it? That’s never happened before this. Yet another thing for me to look into. But it’s all part of the puzzle.” She all but clapped her hands with glee. “Now, I’ll leave you two to finish up, but Piper, when you get some free time, I’d like to come and talk to you. Give me a ring and I’ll stop by. And you, Charlie, don’t forget to enter my contest. I’m absolutely holding you to your promise!” Before either one of them could say a word, Autumn had escaped out the door, leaving Piper and Charlie alone in the kitchen.

Piper gave her youthful guest a sideways glance, not sure if she felt horrified or amused. “Well, it seems like Autumn Avening got her claws into you pretty quickly.” She smiled tentatively. “She’s really pushing that contest of hers, isn’t she? You’re the second person I’ve talked to today who’s going to enter and—” Piper looked at the clock and laughed. “And it’s only ten in the morning!”

“She’s a persuasive lady,” Charlie replied, her eyebrows waggling. “So, I guess I’m to take it that unusual things happen pretty frequently around here? Do you want to . . . tell me a little bit about whatever just happened when you disappeared?”

“Look,” Piper said ruefully, “I’m not trying to be mysterious. But whatever your questions are going to be, I don’t think I’ll be able to answer them. The truth is, I don’t know. I just don’t know how I do it, and I don’t know where I go.” She heard what sounded like pleading in her own voice.

Apparently Charlie was going to make this easy for her; after a tiny pause, she simply changed the subject. “You know what? I think I really like Avening. I think I’d like to stay for a while. I feel like I’m supposed to be here. Is that weird?”

“You basically just watched me reappear out of thin air. I’m not sure that question really fits, given the circumstances,” Piper said with a little grin.

“No, I guess not. So—shall we get on with it? Quick and painless, I promise.”

“Absolutely.” Piper should have felt odd or strange or at the very least embarrassed about what Charlie had seen. But Charlie made Piper feel like they were old friends. And so Piper began to speak, and as she did so, she realized that she was right. Charlie’s questions were so right on that she couldn’t help but feel she had made a friend. She knew without a doubt that Charlie would protect her, and she was right.