The Ever Breath Page 8

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Magical Gifts

  Camille remembered that the third step was missing. She jumped over the space and landed in the cellar, her hands clamped on her backpack’s shoulder straps. She looked past the gears, tubes, and corks, the baskets of berries, searching for the passageway to the Breath World. There was no time to waste—Truman was lost and her father, just a boy now, was there too. They needed her.

  After scanning the room, she squatted down. From there, she spied a hole in the wall—a hole with a faint dim glow.

  It was too small to crawl into with the backpack on her back. She quickly reversed it so that it sat on her chest and pushed the globe off to the side a bit so that she wouldn’t press on it too hard. Then she got down on all fours and pushed herself in. She crawled as swiftly as she could. The glowing jars of browsenberry wine lit her way. She thought of Truman. Lost in the woods? Lost in the Breath World? He was afraid of bullies and sidewalk cracks. How would he survive?

  The passageway got tighter. She felt as if she could barely breathe. The dirt was crumbling at the edges. She could feel the moist earth dampening the knees of her jeans. She started to wonder if her grandmother was crazy. Was any of this real? It would have felt like a dream, but the smell of the earth was too clear, the sound of the jostling snow globe inside the backpack too precise. She’d never dreamed in that kind of detail.

  And then she came to a room with a branch reaching up into the shape of a gnarled and knotted hand—a hand holding nothing. The pinky was curled completely, as if it were broken and in need of a splint. She touched the rough bark, let her hand slip into the wooden hand. It was warm and strong.

  There was something about the room that made her want to sit there and think about things. It felt like a place where you could come to some understanding. She didn’t have time to linger, though. She walked toward the tunnel up ahead, and that was when she saw the little husks.

  They were small and translucent, the kind she’d read about in stories of survivors who’d had to eat locusts. Locusts molted and left behind strange, alien-looking exoskeletons. There was a small pile of them—two dozen or more. Some were broken into shards; others were still intact. What were they doing here in this hidden room deep under the ground?

  She heard a noise up ahead—almost like a howling wind.

  Then there was banging—sharp, hard knocks. Five in a row, then a pause. Then four more, a pause, and then six bangs in a row.

  She began crawling into the tunnel on the other side of the room, moving steadily until she saw light at the end—a golden light. She climbed up and out of the hole … into a tiny one-room hut. As soon as Camille stood up, she felt strange. Her eyesight was blurry and dim.

  Was there dust in her eyes from the tunnel? She closed her eyes and then opened them again. The room was filled with blurry objects—a fat stove, a table and chair, ceiling-hung crockery, narrow cupboards. The walls, of mud and roots and vines, were twisting with shadows that weren’t shadows at all. They were cats with human hands, walking everywhere—on the small bed, the counter, the table. And it was there, on the table, that she saw Truman’s glasses, neatly folded. Her heart lurched in her chest. She rubbed her eyes, then took another look. Yes. They were his glasses, all right. It was proof. He’d really been here!

  The banging was coming from an old woman wearing a wooly blue knit hat. She was holding a hammer and trying to wedge a thick branch into one of the room’s saggy corners, using the branch as a tent pole. She seemed flustered, but strong. She was muttering wildly under her breath, through lips that were crimped around nails. The other corners of the room were propped up by sticks already, but one of the sticks had snapped in half just above the sink and the mud ceiling had crumbled into the basin, which was now full of dirt.

  Camille wasn’t sure what to do or say. She would have knocked first, but she hadn’t come through a door. So she gave a little cough.

  The cats inched in and started hissing at her. This made the woman spin around, wielding the hammer over her head. She spat the nails out of her mouth.

  “Who is it?” she sputtered. “D-d-don’t think I won’t use this!” One of her eyes was blue and wide with fear and the other was shiny and black. This was Ickbee. Though she and Swelda were identical twins, they didn’t look completely identical anymore. Swelda’s face had become gaunt with age, but Ickbee’s was big, pink, and flushed.

  “Child of Cragmeal!” the woman said. “Oh my!” She bowed down. “I can’t tell you how this makes me feel—so proud, like a wind-caught sail on a tall, tall ship!” She lifted her head and spread her arms wide. “Look at you! My heart’s so full it may burst at the seams!” She wrapped her arms around Camille and smothered her for a moment. Camille felt the air being squeezed from her lungs. “Oh,” Ickbee cried, “it makes me want to cry to see you after all this time! But that’s no good, no good at all.” She released Camille, then pulled a handkerchief from her sweater sleeve and wiped her nose. “I’ve got to get this house propped up before it caves in on itself. And I can’t hammer with my one good eye blurred by tears!” She raised the hammer and then quickly lowered it. Ickbee’s mind changed gears quickly. “I’m sorry I lost your brother. He’s fleet of foot, that one!”

  “That’s, um … okay?” Camille said, though she wasn’t so sure that it was.

  “This house is tumbling in on itself and it will shrivel if the Ever Breath isn’t found,” Ickbee said. “The passageway will turn to dust and death! I tell you, death! Both worlds will be lost.”

  “This is it, then, right?” Camille asked. “The Breath World?”

  “But a mere dark corner of it,” Ickbee answered.

  “But you’re one of the keepers of the passageway between the two worlds and”—Camille turned around and pointed to the tunnel—“that’s where the Ever Breath once was? In there? In the hand with the broken pinky?”

  “Broken pinky!” Ickbee stomped her foot. “It’s begun!”

  “What’s begun?” Camille asked, feeling slightly panicked.

  “The hand! If the Ever Breath is gone for too long, the hand will curl up just like that, finger by finger. If it forms a solid fist, the Ever Breath can never be replaced!”

  “We still have time,” Camille said. “It was only the pinky!”

  “It will go quickly now,” Ickbee whispered. “Look at them!” She pointed to some wilting roots, the mud around them collapsing onto the floor in small mounds.

  “How much time do you think we have?”

  “A matter of days. We’ll have to find your brother, hope for some communication from your father, and, of course, hope that your father’s had luck locating the Ever Breath and—” She broke off and clapped at the mewlers. “Help me here! Start propping this up! I’ve got to take care of the child of Cragmeal!”

  They sulked and hissed, but slowly they moved to the pile of branches on the floor.

  Ickbee turned to Camille and said, “But you must be hungry! I forgot. I have food for you. I must seem a dansey-headed fool!” She scanned the counters, the stovetop. “Take a seat! At the table!”

  Camille sat down and stared at her brother’s glasses. Her eyes were still blurry and she was getting a headache from squinting. She picked up the glasses and impulsively slipped them on. Everything snapped into focus—the mewlers’ fur, the roots lining the small hole she’d climbed up from, even the grooves in the table and her own hands.

  “Mewlers!” Ickbee cried, clapping hurriedly. “Quick now! Prop, prop, prop! Keep at it!” Ickbee was more in focus for Camille now too. Her face was chubby and round and pretty. Her one blue eye and her one strange black-pearl eye seemed to glitter. She smiled at Camille. “Mewlers are actually quite handy around the house! Good company for an old woman. Bean loaf, bean loaf, bean loaf,” Ickbee said, pacing along the counter. “Where is the bean loaf?” She started rattling around under the sink.

  The mewlers clattered boards and nails.

  “Excu
se me,” Camille said, over the noise.

  “Yes?” Ickbee said. Her head was in the cupboard under the sink and when she lifted it, she struck the back of her head on the wood casing. “Oof!” She rubbed the sore spot. “That will be a nasty welt!”

  “I’d like to know what happened.”

  “Happened?”

  “To the Ever Breath,” Camille said.

  Ickbee collapsed onto the little bed for a moment. “I was robbed! It can happen to anyone. It wasn’t all my fault. I’m not the first keeper of the passage to have a problem. I mean, during the flood of 1812, there was that infant sea creature that somehow swam through and took up in some Fixed World sea where I hear he grew quite big and thrived. There have been a couple of blood-betakers, a stray wolven man, for which all of the Breath World is extremely apologetic.” She shook her head wearily.

  “Do you mean that real magical creatures have gone through that passage from this world to the Fixed World?”

  “Occasionally. Just a wee lapse at our end.”

  “Um, by blood-betakers, do you mean something like vampires? And wolven men, like werewolves? And by sea creature, do you mean, like, the Loch Ness Monster?”

  Ickbee chuckled. “I forget all of the strange terms you Breath Worlders have for everything. Loch Ness rings a distant bell—”

  “Don’t you think you might want to keep a little closer watch on this passageway?” Camille asked, a bit irritated. “I mean, even stores at the mall have rent-a-cops!”

  “Rent-a-cops? I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “Fake badge? Stun gun? I mean, you should have this place a little more protected, don’t you think?”

  “In my defense, since I inherited it, only a very small number of creatures have slipped through. A few urfs who heard rumors of golden pots, a few fairies, one fire-breather—but he was on the small side, about the size of a boar, really, so that’s not all that terrible! I mean, I heard that he set fire accidentally to a … what do you call them? Mini-mart? In any case, it’s nothing compared to the cow-sized fire-breather who did all that damage to your grand city of Chicago! That was not on my watch! I’ll tell you that much.”

  Camille was stunned. “You might want to look into, um, an alarm system, at the very least!”

  “Easy come, easy go … but the enchantment was always in place to protect the Ever Breath. Always! This time someone broke the enchantment!” Ickbee spotted the bread basket. “Ah,” she said, “I know where I put the bean loaf!” And she jumped up and pulled out a fat roll of something that looked like meat loaf and began to cut it into wedges.

  “I brought my lunch,” Camille said. She heard a strange buzz. Two fluttering things zipped around Ickbee’s head. Ickbee tried to wave them off, but they only flitted over to Camille, who smacked one midair and sent it soaring across the room.

  “Small infestation this year,” Ickbee said, setting a plate of bean loaf in front of Camille. “Sorry about that!”

  “A small infestation of what?”

  “Locust fairies,” Ickbee said. “They’re a tedious nuisance, but nothing more. They keep the mewlers entertained.”

  “Did I just hit a fairy?” Camille was horrified. Until recently she’d loved fairies! She looked down on the floor and saw a small creature—half fairy, half locust—stand up and dust off her thin wings.

  “Locust fairy,” Ickbee corrected. “A spiteful bunch. My little sister, Milta, always loved these things, carried them around in jars.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Camille whispered to the locust fairy.

  The locust fairy eyed her angrily, spat in her direction, and flew up into a cupboard.

  “I kind of figured fairies would be nicer,” Camille said, hurt.

  “Really? Do they have a good reputation in the Fixed World? Here, they’re petty creatures, always holding grudges—”

  And then the howling rose again—a chorus of loud moaning voices, the same sound Camille had heard in the passageway amid the hammering. “What was that?”

  “That howl right there is a blood-betaker,” Ickbee said. Then another, different howl, which was more of a barking yowl, sounded out. Ickbee listened intently and reported, “And that there is the wolven men’s cry. Sometimes they sound quite similar when they’re riled up or proud of themselves or about to eat someone. Maybe some tea? I should at least offer a child of Cragmeal tea!” She turned a quick, dizzying circle, then put the kettle on to boil.

  A brittle, cackling howl rattled the window panes. They both froze.

  “And that?” Camille asked. Her stomach tightened into a knot.

  “Banshees. Their bark is worse than their bite, except when they’re angry. Don’t make them angry!”

  “I’m not planning on it.”

  “All of the most vexing creatures know something’s wrong. They can sense it, like they do a full moon. They can feel that the Ever Breath is gone.” She paused. “Did Swelda give you the gift?”

  “The snow globe?”

  “Yes. Do you have it?”

  Camille unzipped her backpack, pulled the globe out, and set it on the table.

  “Shake it.”

  Camille picked it up and rolled it from one hand to the other. The inner scene was lost in a white swirl, and then slowly the snow settled. There was a mouse in a red vest and a bright plaid scarf, frozen, mid-scamper, in a long marble hallway filled with high-heeled shoes and shiny black leather loafers and pin-striped pant hems. His scarf was sailing behind him, and he had a piece of paper clamped in his teeth.

  Camille leaned over the globe. “It’s just a little nicely dressed mouse!”

  “Ah,” Ickbee said. “And so you truly are gramarye, down deep in your bones!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think that someone of the Fixed World would be able to look in that globe and see what you see?”

  “I don’t know why they wouldn’t,” Camille said.

  “Oh, dearie! They’d see a little house strung with Christmas lights or that hefty man in the red suit riding in a sled. You can see what’s in that globe because you’re of our world.”

  “Really?”

  “Here, we each have our magical gifts.”

  “Swelda called them magical afflictions,” Camille told her.

  “Is she still talking that way of our world? Oh, how that woman steams me!”

  The mewlers had a sturdy branch in place now and were hammering loudly.

  “But who’s the mouse?” Camille shouted over the noise. “He looks important.”

  “I don’t know,” Ickbee said. The howls started sounding out again. They seemed to be echoing from a far-off place, but rolling toward them. “Time will tell. It’s the blood-betakers and the wolven men that we have to keep an eye on now.”

  The kettle let out a shrill whistle that sounded like an alarm. It startled Camille. Her heart felt like a small animal scurrying in her chest.

  “How do you think the Ever Breath got stolen?” Camille asked.

  Ickbee frowned. “Stop blaming me!”

  “I’m not. I—”

  “Please change the subject!”

  “Okay,” Camille said. She had another question ready to ask. “Do you think the blood-betakers and wolven men are riled up or proud of themselves or about to eat someone? Us, for example?”

  Ickbee picked up the kettle and poured the hot water into a cup with the tea bag. The tea was purplish and smelled sweet. She set the cup in front of Camille. The steam rose up and warmed Camille’s cheeks. It was cold here—cold and damp.

  “If the Ever Breath can be returned to its rightful spot in the passageway,” Ickbee said, “everything will be fixed. Everything—blood-betakers, wolven men, this house crumbling in on itself. And the worlds won’t die. It’s simple.”

  Camille wrapped her hands around the cup.

  “How do we get it back?”

  “The problem is simple. The solution might be complex. I hope you find the answer to that
,” Ickbee said, closing the shutters. “You and your missing brother.”

  “Truman and me?” Camille looked at Ickbee—was she serious? “What about my dad?”

  “Ah, well, he requires the telling of a tale. Eat and then I’ll speak.”

  Camille looked at the lump of mysterious bean loaf and thought of her bag lunch in her backpack. Ickbee handed her a fork. Camille wasn’t usually squeamish about food, but this didn’t look right. Trying to be polite, she speared a piece and put it in her mouth. She didn’t recognize a single taste—not one. It was all foreign to her—strange and rich and dark.

  “I sent word to your father through Swelda when the Ever Breath was stolen. He and I hatched a plan at this very table. That plan has sent him to very dangerous corners of this world, and I haven’t heard from him in weeks. I knew that he would need you two to replace the Ever Breath, one on one side of the passage, one on the other side—the balance of twins. But now I’m thinking he may have hit a snag. He may be relying on you more than we first thought.” She lifted her chin. “I have faith in him—and you!”

  Camille’s next bite was lighter, sweeter, like hitting a sweet swirl in cinnamon bread.

  “He made the right decision all those years ago,” Ickbee went on. “I know that now. Your father is a forever child. He grew up with his mother and with me, splitting his time between two worlds. I half-raised him, you know. That part of his life has likely been erased.” She looked at Camille.

  Camille would have liked to tell her that it hadn’t been erased … but it had. In fact, Camille knew almost nothing about his childhood, and certainly no one had ever told her about the existence of another world. The bean loaf now moved from sweetness to a dense sadness—that was the only way Camille could explain it. She tasted grief.

  Ickbee nodded and went on. “But then he fell in love with your mother in the Fixed World. He asked me for an enchantment so that he could live a normal life there with her. And although I knew that it meant giving him up, I gave him the enchantment.” She shook her head. “It was the right thing, but it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Her voice rasped in her throat. “But the enchantment only works in the Fixed World. When he crawled up from the passageway three months ago after I sent word to my sister that the Ever Breath was gone, he was just as I remembered him. He stood in this room with bits of dirt in his hair and was my little boy again.” Her marble eye glistened in the lamplight. “And even though he was standing there in front of me for the first time in ages, I missed him more than ever.”