Gaze Upon My Works And Emote

The trouble was that there wasn’t much for them to do inside. They didn’t have any puzzles, hadn’t brought any toys with them, didn’t know how to play chess and weren’t allowed to touch the set anyway for whatever reason. There was the telly, but when Grandmother Sims—no, Mrs Sims, Melanie wasn’t supposed to call her Grandmother—had realized that they’d got the idea for their adventure from a television program, she’d forbidden them from watching it until she was satisfied they would understand that just because they could see something, even with real people climbing around it, didn’t mean it was actually real. Which pretty much left them books.

Melanie hated reading. She didn’t dislike books in general—she loved being read to—but actually reading herself, she struggled. The words seemed to slide around on the page and escape easy comprehension. Mr Dumphrey, their teacher that year, had been very helpful and given her a few tricks, but it still wasn’t easy like it was for Jon and she still hated it. Jon could skate through a book in almost no time flat, but when they were reading on their own, he would linger over pages, rereading and savoring passages before moving on. He was also, luckily for her, more than happy to read out loud to her when she asked him to, and they’d read a lot of very good books like that.

The thing was that Jon didn’t like rereading books. Or, no, not disliked, but it bored him to already know where the book was going, or to feel like he’d read it before. Melanie didn’t mind, and in fact often preferred to reread old favorites because she could usually pin the letters down easier, and she counted herself lucky that Jon was willing to reread books, or finish books he clearly didn’t like, if she asked him to. For her. In return, she’d sat through him reading a couple of books he liked a lot that she didn’t care for, because it only seemed fair.

But Mrs Sims didn’t exactly have a vast library of books, and Jon and Melanie had already read them all. (Well, not exactly all of them. Mrs Sims mostly seemed to read the same three or four authors, and even Melanie hadn’t been desperate enough to ask Jon to read her another one of those.) They didn’t bring books with them because books made their suitcases too heavy to carry on their own on the train and they couldn’t count on the aunt they were being put in the charge of to help them, and it was a long way to the library if they walked (Mrs Sims didn’t drive and taxis cost too much money, she said), so they usually only went once every summer.

Surprisingly, Mrs Sims had actually hit on a solution.

“There,” she announced, dumping her latest pile of books onto the floor of the living room. “You ought to find enough in that to last you the rest of the visit.”

She swept out of the room and into the master bedroom, leaving the door open, and a few moments later they heard the opening notes of one of her stories coming from the telly. Melanie scowled in that direction, then turned back to Jon. “Did you hear an or else in that, or was it just me?”

Jon wrinkled his nose. “It’s not just you. We’ll have to read slow. Come on, let’s see if there’s anything juicy in this lot.”

As solutions went, it wasn’t a bad one. Mrs Sims had decided to simply waltz into the nearest charity shop, buy up all of the books on sale for less than a pound, and bring them home for Jon and Melanie to pick through. Once they had read everything they wanted out of it, she would take them all to a different shop and begin again. Melanie reckoned it wouldn’t last for long, since there were only so many charity shops in Bournemouth within walking distance, but maybe it would work for a couple of years yet. This, however, was the third lot she’d brought them, and her tone of voice had definitely left the impression that she had expected this to hold them longer.

It wasn’t exactly their fault, since she wasn’t looking at anything other than the price. The first batch had been mostly soppy romances and a few battered classics, so hadn’t held them long. The second lot had been more interesting, including a particularly gory horror novel she would never have permitted them to even look at while at the library, let alone check out, but even so they had gone through everything inside of a week. It was clear that Mrs Sims was not prepared to indulge them much further, so they had best set aside a good stockpile and read slow.

At first glance, it didn’t look promising. At least half of the titles didn’t have pictures on the cover, which usually meant they were some sort of dry, dusty textbook. Melanie picked one up and squinted at it hard, trying to make the letters make sense, then gave a frustrated growl and held it out to Jon. “I can’t even begin to make this one out! What’s it called?”

Jon took the book and puzzled over it for a moment, which surprised her, then flipped it open and skimmed it before shaking his head in obvious relief. “It’s in Latin. I think. I recognize this phrase from one of Daddy’s law books, anyway. We could try to work it out, but I don’t think it’ll make much sense.”

“That’s okay,” Melanie said, relieved. She wasn’t completely stupid. “Anything good over there?”

“This one has a dragon on the cover.” Jon held up a thick book with a fancy script on the title, which probably meant it was long and tricky to get through. Might hold them for a while. “It’s called A Darkness at—Seth-a-non. I think that’s how it’s pronounced. It must be a made up place.”

“Are you sure?”

“There are dragons, Melanie. It’s not in England.” Jon set it aside in the for later pile and reached for another one. “Oh, this one’s a cookbook, never mind.”

Melanie picked up a book with a black cover and bright writing, which might mean a horror book. The cover showed a pretty girl with long, flowing hair. She was about to read the title aloud, or try to, when she saw the author’s name and dropped it. “Nope. Not that one.”

Jon picked it up curiously and dropped it just as quickly. “I don’t know if she has that one. Maybe we should bring it to her later. She might want to keep it.”

“I don’t know why she likes those.”

“I don’t, either.” Jon pushed the book away with the Latin book and mumbled, “For all she says we’re not supposed to confuse fiction and reality…”

Melanie paused, turning that over in her mind for a moment. “You reckon that’s why she won’t let us shut the door?”

Jon shrugged one shoulder. “I dunno. I tell you what, though, I’m not going to eat any powdered doughnuts if she offers them to us.”

“You’d better not.” Melanie wrinkled her nose at him and went back to rummaging through the pile. A slim white cardboard volume caught her eye, and she tugged on the corner. “Oh, look, she found one I can read all by myself, isn’t that nice of her.”

Jon looked up with a frown. “You can read just fine on your own. It just takes you longer. Maybe if you read some of these to me we can make them last the rest of the summer.”

“Ha, ha, very funny.”

“I wasn’t joking. What’s the book called?”

Melanie pulled the book free and held it up. It was very obviously a children’s picture book, which even at her reading ability she’d outgrown, with a simple black drawing of a spider accented with a red bowler hat. The words were on the cover like they had been written there, not printed, and to her surprise she could read them fairly easily. “A Guest for Mister Spider.”

She opened the book, curious, to see a book plate indicating it had originally come from a library of some kind—not the Bournemouth Library, but one she couldn’t quite make out properly. She turned the page and beheld a drawing of the spider, wearing his bowler hat, standing in a living room. There weren’t even as many words on one page as in Paddiwack and Cosy—actually there weren’t any words on the first page. Jon scooted over next to her as she turned the page slowly until she found the first words. “Knock, knock. Who’s there, Mister Spider?”

It was a simple book, of the sort used to teach a simple lesson, although Melanie had no idea what it was meant to teach; the words weren’t all that simple, as words went, and Mister Spider certainly wasn’t very appreciative of the gifts his neighbors were bringing him. Her stomach turned and her voice shook when she got to the third visitor.

“It’s Mister Horse. And he’s brought you his son.”

Mister Horse, and his son, were both very large, very detailed flies in dungarees, but the expressions on their faces reminded Melanie, suddenly and painfully, of the way Daddy had looked the night they had first thought Mrs Sims was going to take Jon away—and the way Jon had looked when he’d thought they might want him gone. It was the look of someone who had already lost so much and was about to lose everything, and she moved unconsciously closer to her brother as she read, just confirming he was still there.

There was a door on the last page. It looked so real, so inviting, that Melanie held it up in front of her like there was an actual door there as she read. “It is…polite…to knock.”

Slowly, shakily, she raised her free hand, forming into knuckles, and drew back to knock on the door.

“Well, well, well, what have we here, eh?”

The book was suddenly ripped from Melanie’s fingers—and Jon’s, who was holding the other side. She blinked, gasping in surprise, as the world rushed back in in glorious Technicolor, greens and browns and blues and—

Wait. How had they got to the park?

“That’s not yours,” Jon said indignantly, but he also sounded a little disorientated. Melanie felt his hand slip into hers and squeeze.

She looked up and nearly growled in frustration. Of course. Standing over them, holding the book over their heads like bait, was none other than Andrew Young.

“What, little baby genius reading a little baby book?” Andrew sneered. He was fairly well known in the area, something of a jack of all trades—and master of none—who “did” for quite a few of the widows and elderly folks in the area, of which there were many, billing himself as “Handy Andy”. He’d developed a long lasting and enduring hatred of Jon the first summer they were here based entirely on the fact that Jon was smarter than he was, which actually wasn’t that difficult; there were things lurking at the bottom of the Bourne that were smarter than Andrew was, and more likable and better smelling, too. He was the sort of person disqualified from being the Village Idiot because he wasn’t smart enough for the title, and he compensated for that by being a bully. That his chosen targets were ten years his junior spoke to the fact that he was also a coward who knew anyone older would likely put him in his place.

If he thought Jon and Melanie between them couldn’t put him in his place, he was even stupider than he looked, except that they would get in real trouble if they got caught fighting again.

“Give it back, Andrew,” she said. She jumped for it, even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. She didn’t know why it was so important that she have it back, but it was theirs.

“Or what?” Andrew asked, grinning sharply. “What are you going to do, runt, chew my ankles off?” He snickered and brought the book down. “Of course you were reading something like this. Need any help with the big words? A Guest for Mister Spider.” He enunciated each syllable carefully.

His voice trailed off, however, as he opened the book and his eyes locked on the pictures. His jaw went slack, making him look even stupider than usual, and he began to read. And to walk, as if in a dream.

Jon and Melanie looked at each other. On unspoken agreement, they followed him. Maybe the big idiot would fall down a sewer grating and they could catch the book before it went after.

His path took him away from the park and down a street. Melanie wasn’t sure what page he was on until he walked up to the porch of one of the houses and held the book up in front of himself, right over the front door of the building.

It is polite to knock.

Seemingly in a trance, Andrew raised one hand, curled it into a fist, and rapped it against the book. Knock. Knock.

The door opened.

It opened slowly and quickly at the same time, not very far, just enough for them to see a black pit beyond. Thin, spindly black arms reached out of the door, reaching for Andrew. He never had time for anything more than a brief whimper before the arms dragged him into the door and it slammed shut behind him.

“Melanie!” Jon’s arms were suddenly tight around her chest, and he was dragging her back—when had she gone up to the steps? When had she started to go in? They overbalanced and fell over, landing hard on their backsides, and Jon didn’t let go of Melanie as he tried to scoot backwards.

Something inside Melanie snapped, like a tether had been cut. She pushed to her feet and grabbed Jon’s hand, dragging him upright, and they ran. She wasn’t even sure where they were exactly, but they ran as fast as they could away. Away was the important thing. Away from the house, away from the door, away from Mister Spider. She knew he was real, he was in that house, that was where he lived, and if they had knocked on the door then they would have been the more he wanted and they wouldn’t have come out…

“That does it,” Mrs Sims boomed as they burst through the front door, gasping and with tears streaming down their faces and still clutching one another’s hands. “I told you to stay indoors. If you cannot follow such simple instructions, then this door will remain locked unless you are accompanied by me in the future. We will discuss this further in the morning. To your rooms without supper, and not another word!”

Melanie didn’t argue. For once, there was nothing she wanted more than to be in their room, locked in and safe, and she didn’t think she could eat now if she was expected to.

Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when Jon, not even bothering to change into his pajamas, crawled under the bed. Melanie crawled in after him. It felt secure down there, and they snuggled together and clung and tried to stop shaking.

“That was worse, right?” she finally asked. “It’s not just my imagination? That was worse than the boat.”

She felt rather than saw Jon nod. “The boat was—i-it was just us, and it was…it just happened. That—that book tried to take us, a-and Andrew…he saved us.”

“He was an idiot,” Melanie said, her voice watery. “He took something that wasn’t his and he fell into a trap and—he didn’t save us on purpose, Jon. He just took our place.”

“It’s not fair,” Jon murmured. “It’s not right.”

“But it happened.”

“It happened.” Jon’s voice was nearly a whisper.

They lay there silently for several minutes, relishing the fact that they were alive and together and safe, at least for now. Nothing could get to them. Melanie instinctively felt that Mister Spider would be full, at least for now, and that he wouldn’t come after them anymore, but even if he did, he would have to get through the doors and Mrs Sims, and she was tough and chewy enough that she would probably slow him down enough for them to get away.

“We should find out more,” Jon said finally. “Not now. But when we grow up. Maybe, maybe there are scientists or, or people like that who study…scary things. Monsters and ghosts and whatnot. Maybe we can do something like that.”

Melanie turned the idea over in her mind. It made sense. “Then we can prevent other kids from getting hurt. Or other idiots like Andrew from getting taken away. Maybe if we know, we can…fix them. There are lots of doctors who can help people like Mummy, but if there were lots of people who knew what things like Mister Spider was, we’d hear about them, right?”

“Right.” Jon sighed and pressed his forehead against Melanie’s. “We can find out when we get home if it’s a thing already or if we have to be the first ones, but we can do it. We can.”

They ran down the path to the sandy beach and the relatively untouched cove. They had always preferred this spot to the more crowded and judgmental parts of the beach anyway, and that also made it the perfect hiding place. Not for them, although they definitely wanted to hide from Grandmother Sims—not that Jon called her that if he could get away with it, since Melanie wasn’t supposed to either—as often as possible. But ever since they had watched the television program and recognized some of the buildings in the town, they’d been thinking about this. And then Jon had found the books the show was based on and worked things out, and…well. The cove would be perfect, as long as nobody caught them.

Nobody had.

Melanie stabbed the long spar of wood into the sand—gently, so as not to break it—next to the one they’d found earlier and grabbed one edge of the half rotten tarpaulin. Jon had had the forethought to bury the corners so the tarp didn’t fly away, but it wouldn’t be hard to pull up. “We’re going now, right?”

“We kind of have to.” Jon squinted up at the sky. It was a clear, clear blue, but he knew that didn’t mean much. “You know how fast the weather can change, and she got short with me when I tried to look at the report in the paper. I guess she wasn’t finished.”

“Shame she doesn’t watch the news,” Melanie said bitterly. “Just her stories.”

Jon grabbed another edge of the tarp. “Well, if the treasure is still there, we can buy our own radio and listen to whatever we want, and if it’s not we can live there until it’s time to go home and it won’t matter anyway.”

“Won’t she get mad?”

“Sure she’ll get mad. But she has to find us first.” Jon dragged the tarp back. “Come on. You get in and I’ll—”

“No way,” Melanie interrupted. “We’re launching this together, remember? Toss the oars in and let’s go.”

Jon gave her a mock salute. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Melanie narrowed her eyes at him. He knew she didn’t mean anything by it. “Shut it, mate.”

Jon simply smiled, as innocently as he could. “First mate?”

“I hate you,” Melanie claimed. Jon, who knew better, just laughed.

They had argued, privately, over what to call the boat. It wasn’t a proper rowboat, or even a real boat at all; neither of them knew how to properly make one. Jon had found directions, kind of, in a book from the library, but they weren’t allowed to use a saw even if they’d been able to find a barrel, and the book had been maddeningly vague on how the character had “fitted” a half lid to make a keel anyway. (And also they were mice. Maybe it was different for people.) But then they had found an old, abandoned trunk in their explorations and been able to smuggle it to their cove before they “wandered” too far and had to be brought back by the police—not that they’d ever really gone that far, just that they sometimes got into places they weren’t technically supposed to be. It had taken them a few days to get the vessel shipshape, but the last step had been finding wood to use as oars. The night before, they’d managed to catch a few minutes of a movie being shown before being sent to bed, and the narrator had given their boat a name that was perfect.

“Right,” Jon announced, tossing the two pieces of wood into the boat. “Quick, before someone sees us. All aboard the SS Toy Box.”

Melanie grabbed the side of the box in front; Jon grabbed the opposite corner in the back, and together they ran into the gentle surf. Once they were in it up to their knees, Melanie jumped over the side like they always did in the pictures, and it worked. Jon jumped in on the other side. The boat dipped a little bit below the water’s surface with their combined weight, but it stayed floating.

“Yes!” Melanie pumped her fists triumphantly in the air, then picked up the shorter oar. “She floats! Next stop, Kirrin Island!”

They made awkward, stuttering progress at first, until Jon started singing one of the songs they’d learned in school over the last year, one of the ones their new music teacher called a call and response song that were meant to teach them how to sing in parts. Melanie sang the echoes back to him and, just as he’d hoped, she started pulling in time with the singing. Jon reckoned it would do better than calling “stroke” like the rowing team at the university did. It also meant they got some good speed going. That was especially good, because the further out they got, the less likely they were to be caught.

They couldn’t see their destination from here. Obviously they couldn’t. Their science teacher had told them that, all other things being equal, a human being could only see about three miles away, to the edge of the horizon, and—by Jon’s calculations, which might be a bit off—they were closer to ten miles away. It was going to take them most of the day to get there, but it would be worth it.

Kirrin Island. Technically it belonged to the Kirrin family—specifically to George Kirrin by now, or so Jon supposed, since he’d deciphered (with some help) the date at the front of the book. That is, if the people in the books were real. Of course both Jon and Melanie had long ago outgrown the idea that just because a thing was written down meant it was true, and there were lots of stories told to try and explain real things that nobody actually knew anything about. There could very easily be no such person as George Kirrin, or any such place as Kirrin Cottage.

The island, now, that had to truly exist. One couldn’t just invent land masses that weren’t really there. Maybe it wasn’t called Kirrin Island at all, but it had to be there.

Right?

“Ten points to starboard,” Melanie called over her shoulder.

“You don’t know what points are,” Jon argued, even as he dragged his paddle backwards to make the boat turn right.

“Do, too,” Melanie shot back. “It’s the little lines on the compass. Ten points is turning ten of those.”

“Did you bring a compass?”

“Shut up.”

Jon reckoned they had turned enough and resumed paddling forward. “Anyway, those are degrees.”

Melanie scowled over her shoulder and missed a stroke, then hastily returned her gaze forward. “They’re the same thing.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

The argument quickly dissolved into silliness and giggling as it dawned on both of them that their chanting was fulfilling the same role as the singing had earlier in keeping them on stroke. Jon was glad of that, as it kept him from having to admit that Melanie might just possibly be right. He would have to look it up when he got home.

The waves were smooth as glass and the sky was utterly cloudless, and except for a very, very faint difference in the color you almost couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began if you were looking straight ahead. At least Jon couldn’t. He trusted that Melanie either could or would know where they were navigating to. They had a map, not a very good one since they’d drawn it themselves based on the map in the library and a whole lot of guesswork—for some reason it stopped before it got to Kirrin Island. Still, it ought to be enough, and Melanie ought to be able to follow it.

Then again, maybe they should have brought a compass, too.

The sun beat down on their shoulders. It had rained very early that morning, but the storm had long passed, so they ought to be fine, at least for the moment. Jon didn’t smell rain, although it was hard to smell anything other than the salt of the English Channel. Anyway, he wasn’t worried about them getting lost. They would have to lose sight of the shore in order to reach the island, he thought, and even if they missed it, well, the Channel was at its second narrowest point here. They would just hit France. He didn’t really speak French, but they could learn, and anyway that would make it harder for her to find them.

Jon let his mind wander a bit, even as he kept up the are-not, are-too chant. He wished the judge hadn’t been so nice to Grandmother Sims when they’d gone to court and said she was allowed to see him. Thank goodness Melanie got to come with him. There had been a bit of fuss about that, but he’d insisted when they were setting everything up that he wouldn’t go without his sister and the judge had agreed with him, which was good. Grandmother Sims disagreed, clearly, but she hadn’t been able to argue. She’d tried, saying she only had one bedroom on the ground floor and she hadn’t used the upstairs since her husband died, but she did technically have those rooms, and since Jon and Melanie shared a room at home the judge had said it would be all right if they shared one anyway. Even Grandmother Sims’ barrister had agreed.

There were rules. Too many rules. Of course some rules were good if they kept you safe, but it was silly that they weren’t allowed to shut the bedroom door. And her insistence that children should be seen but not heard sounded a whole lot like be more ladylike and neither of them were good at that. She never wanted to hear what they’d been up to all day long, very rarely asked about anything at all other than quizzing them on what they were learning in school. Dinnertime discussions largely centered around correcting their manners—which weren’t that bad—or comparing Jon to Papa, often unfavorably. All his undesirable traits—at least undesirable to her, since Jon didn’t see what was so bad about, for example, not wanting his food to mix together—came from Mama, which was silly, because some of them were just how he liked doing things and some of them were things he’d been taught by Mummy or Daddy.

He didn’t like other things about being at Grandmother Sims’, either. Like the fact that she didn’t want them speaking anything but “the Queen’s English”, which didn’t just mean using proper grammar and diction—or what she thought was proper, anyway—but also meant they weren’t allowed to practice their Cantonese where she could hear them.

Well, no more of that. Once they got to the island, they could talk how they liked all the time, and she couldn’t stop them. And then it would be time to go home and they would be safe.

He glanced back over his shoulder. The cove was out of sight, which he’d kind of expected since they had turned. What he hadn’t expected was that the shoreline would have vanished, too. He didn’t think they had been rowing that long, but they must have, mustn’t they? To have lost sight of the shore on the horizon, they had to have gone at least three miles.

He was just about opening his mouth to ask Melanie how far she reckoned they had gone and if she reckoned they were getting close when the first wave hit.

It came out of nowhere. One minute the water was still as midnight, and the next a wave taller than Jon crashed against the side of the boat, shoving them to one side. Jon only just managed to keep from overbalancing. He straightened quickly. “What was that?”

“Dunno,” Melanie called over her shoulder. “Maybe another boat?”

“We should have seen it coming,” Jon argued. “The wave, I mean.”

Melanie scowled over her shoulder. “I’m watching where we’re going. You look for waves.”

“No, I mean—” Jon began. Before he could finish his sentence, a second wave slammed into them from the other side.

That—wasn’t right. It wasn’t how waves were supposed to work. They came from one direction, and they didn’t start out of nowhere like that. Unless there was some kind of underwater volcano or an explosion of some kind, but even then—

He shook his head and pushed the oar on the side of the boat opposite the wave, to try and keep them upright. “Keep paddling! If we go alongside them, we can make it,” he shouted to Melanie.

“Keep us on course then,” Melanie yelled back, digging her paddle deep into the water.

Jon ducked his head and did the same, concentrating as hard as he could. The waves had come from almost exactly opposite one another, so it shouldn’t be hard to keep them in a straight line. As long as they didn’t panic, as long as they just kept their speed—

The sudden shadow falling over them was all the warning they got. Jon looked up sharply and felt his blood run cold at the sight of a gigantic pair of waves, easily twelve feet high, suddenly rising up on either side of the boat, curling over like greedy, grasping claws.

In that split second, he knew they wouldn’t be able to row fast enough to escape.

Jon and Melanie both screamed as the waves crashed down. Jon didn’t know what possessed him, but he swung upward with his paddle, as if he could bat the wave away before it touched them. It seemed to almost snatch the paddle from his hands and toss it away before it, and its companion, slammed into the boat and ripped it apart, sending them both crashing into the water.

The shock of the cold water stunned him and stole the air from his lungs. It also pushed him down far faster than he had expected. Jon flailed, trying to right himself, but he found himself tumbling as he went, thoroughly disorientated. He couldn’t tell which way he was facing. His glasses—somehow—were still on his face, but when he opened his eyes, all he could see was blue. Some distant part of his mind told him that wasn’t right, that sunlight shouldn’t penetrate this far and he shouldn’t be able to see blue, but that was quickly swallowed up by panic and the fact that he couldn’t breathe.

Melanie. Where was Melanie?

Jon’s panic kicked into higher gear. On the one hand, he didn’t want Melanie to die—but on the other hand, they were always together. Always. She’d insisted she wouldn’t go without him and vice versa. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t.

He stared around himself frantically, but there was nothing but blue, blue, blue everywhere he looked, a uniform, solid blue that meant he couldn’t even tell where the sunlight might be coming from, he didn’t know where he was, which way was up? Where had up gone?

“Melanie!” he screamed, or tried to. All that came out were bubbles. He frantically watched, trying to see which way they went—but they didn’t go, they just hung in front of his face for a second and then became part of the endless blue. That didn’t make sense. It wasn’t right. There had to be an up, air had to go somewhere, bubbles had to float, where was Melanie, he couldn’t lose her, couldn’t let her die without him, couldn’t die without her—

He shot out his hand, encountered something, and grabbed onto it hard. It was solid and soft and at first it was cold, too cold, but then it warmed up and clutched him back and he knew, he knew it was his sister’s hand, would know it anywhere. Just to be sure, he squeezed three times in a row, one two three, and the hand he was clinging to repeated the gesture back. He gasped in relief and swallowed salt but the bubbles went up, and he kicked his legs and followed them—

—and broke the surface with a great shuddering gasp, and oh, thank God, Melanie’s head broke the surface next to him, gasping and sobbing and frantically fighting to keep her head above water, too.

“Melanie?” Jon cried, just to make sure. The waves were choppier than they had been and he got a mouthful of seawater, but he tipped his head back.

“Jon,” Melanie wailed. She slipped under the surface briefly, and he almost panicked before she resurfaced, still clutching his hand.

“There they are!” a faint voice cried, and Jon turned just in time to see an orange ring flying towards them. It landed in the water next to them with a dull thwap, and Jon saw that there were black straps all around the outside edge of it. He grabbed hold of one with his free hand; Melanie did the same, but neither was willing to relinquish the other’s hand to get a better grip.

Luckily, they didn’t need one, and a few moments later, they were hauled dripping and coughing in the crisp white boat belonging to the Bournemouth Police Department. The second his knees touched the plasticine seat, Jon lunged forward and threw his arms around Melanie, hugging her tight.

Melanie did the same.

“You two got yourselves in quite a pickle this time,” PC Poppers, one of the officers Grandmother Sims often sent after them, said in a kindly voice. “Lucky for you someone spotted you. Be more careful playing in boxes around the ocean, aye? Easy for an unexpected tide to sweep you out to sea.”

Jon didn’t need to look at Melanie’s face to know that they were going to keep mum about that one. If anyone found out they’d done it on purpose it would be sure to get back to Grandmother Sims and they’d be in even worse trouble than they were sure to be this time. Not that it ever seemed to matter that they didn’t usually stray far on purpose, but maybe if PC Poppers told her it was an accident they’d be in less trouble.

“Sorry, sir,” he mumbled.

PC Poppers patted his head, then Melanie’s. “There, there. No real harm done. We’ll get you two home and dry in no time.”

Jon shivered, and didn’t argue, not out loud. No real point in saying that Grandmother Sims’ house wasn’t home. Nor did he want to admit that part of him wondered if he would ever feel dry again. His cheeks and eyes stung with salt water, and he honestly couldn’t say what was ocean and what was tears.

She took off running before she actually finished saying the last word, but Jon was expecting that and took off at the same time. They hurtled pell-mell down the street, bags bumping against their backs, skipping over cracks and dodging around those few other people who were out walking. Melanie’s hair ribbons had come loose and Jon was pretty sure his shoe was untied, but neither of them slowed for a minute. They ought to have, of course, Miss Goldman and Mrs Hough and their parents had impressed on them the importance of looking both ways before crossing the road, and that had been one of the conditions of their being permitted to walk themselves home. They also had been explicitly told not to run like this after Jon’s homework folder had gone flying and Melanie had torn her knees tripping in an attempt to catch her skirt from falling down, but they’d secretly agreed that what the grown ups didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anyone. And so, giggling and breathless and still managing to tease one another, they pounded along the pavement until they got to the shortcut.

Mummy had fussed a bit about this, too, even before they were walking themselves, but this part was all right; Mr Fister had told Daddy that the footpath was an ancient right of way and there was an understanding—he’d called it a tacit agreement, and Jon had made him spell it three times to be sure it stuck in his mind—that anyone could use it at any time as long as they weren’t committing a crime, and since Mr Fister was generally agreed to be two years older than God and had moved to Woodley on the day He invented dirt, if he said a thing was true it was understood to be correct. Here, too, stones had been laid down as a kind of footpath, stones that were constantly being replaced and retrod as spring mud and the passage of feet pushed the old ones deeper. Since the planting season had just started, this year’s stones hadn’t been placed yet, so it was still a bit muddy and half the stones were completely sunk. Melanie, as was her habit, hopped from stone to stone trying to only touch the clean parts, not because she cared about her shoes but because that was the game. Jon’s challenge was to only touch every other stone, which was harder this time of year when so many of them couldn’t be seen, since it meant he sometimes had to jump pretty far. When Daddy took the shortcut with them, he always had to do it on one foot like a pogo stick; Mummy didn’t play those sorts of games herself, but she was usually pretty tolerant of theirs. (Jon liked that word, tolerant. It was a grown up word for be kind and polite to one another even if you don’t understand why the other person does it that way and took a lot less time to say, and Mrs Hough had agreed when he told her that and taught it to the whole class and it had been their Word of the Month, which was fun even if—maybe especially because—Mrs Hough hadn’t let him suggest the word after that but asked other people to suggest good words. It meant Jon got to learn new words too and didn’t have to be the one teaching them all the time, and it meant the other kids in the class knew how to use the grown up words and didn’t tease him so much for using them himself.)

Just because they were racing didn’t meant they didn’t have to follow those rules (yes, they had been told not to race, but that was an order, not a rule, so it was fine), but they had both been doing it long enough that they could do it at speed. Melanie shrieked with mingled annoyance and excitement when Jon careened into her trying to jump over a stone she was standing on, grabbed him to steady herself, and overbalanced, sending them both toppling off the path and into the nearest furrow, plowed but not yet planted. Jon managed to twist to keep from losing his glasses or spattering them with mud. The rest of him didn’t fare so well.

He didn’t care. He rolled off of Melanie and pushed himself to his feet, jumping back to his stone, then grabbed Melanie’s hand and pulled her up before taking off down the path again.

“Hey, no fair!” Melanie called, but she was laughing as she chased after him.

From the other side of the shortcut it was only a couple of blocks and then a sharp turn almost doubling back on itself and home was right there. Jon, for once—he refused to think the fall had anything to do with it, he’d almost been ahead of her before that point anyway—was just a little in front of Melanie as they tore down the sidewalk. He glanced over his shoulder, giggling, dodged around the Babashanians’ rubbish bin, swung around the corner—

“Hello, Jon.”

Jon pulled up abruptly. Melanie nearly crashed into him this time, but managed to skid to a halt just in time. Standing between them and the gate over their front path was a man who looked almost exactly like Sir Topham Hatt brought to life save that, rather than being completely bald, there were wisps of steel grey hair curling out from beneath his black silk hat. His eyes, which were almost the same color, were cold and calculating, and the smile on his lips didn’t touch them.

And Jon, who knew everyone in town by name, house, and shoe size, had never seen him before in his life.

“Apologies for the interception,” the strange man continued, “but I had to be certain you would stop and speak with me, so I thought it best not to call attention to myself.” He ran an eye over Jon and added, “You ought to be more careful, you know. It would be a dreadful shame if anything happened to you because you weren’t…watching.”

Jon took a half step backwards, doing his best to stay between this man and Melanie. He didn’t trust him for a minute. Melanie, of course, was quite often hard to convince that she needed him to protect her and would stand shoulder to shoulder with him against any threats. This time, she not only got up next to him, she tried to push in front of him to keep between him and the man.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

“Ah, you must be Melanie.” The strange man’s smile widened in a way that was clearly meant to be even friendlier and more welcoming but, to Jon, only seemed even more dangerous. “I’ve heard so much about you. You two care for each other very much, do you not? And to answer your question, why…” He produced from a pocket a small, rectangular box wrapped neatly in shiny gold paper and tied round with a green ribbon done up in an elaborate bow. “I’m Jon’s grandfather, and I’m here to give him a present for his birthday.”

Fear took hold of Jon’s stomach and twisted it like a clown fashioning a balloon animal. In the first place, the last time he’d encountered someone informing him they were his grandparent, it had been someone who wanted very much to take him away from his family. In the second place, anyone talking about it being his birthday wasn’t somebody who knew or cared about him, because everyone who loved him loved Melanie too and it was their birthday, thank you. That was kind of how being twins worked. Third and most importantly, they didn’t have any grandfathers anymore. Grandfather Sims had died not long after they were born, Grandpa King had died just before their first birthday, and even if both of Mummy’s parents hadn’t died before she even met Daddy, this man was definitely not Chinese. In fact, he looked like the kind of person who only didn’t use words like the one Scott had hurled at them on their first day of school because that wasn’t refined.

Blindly, he groped beside him for Melanie’s hand. She grabbed it tight, the security a comfort. He could feel that she was just as scared as him of this strange man who knew their names. Melanie usually got angry when she was scared, and since Jon didn’t want her to fight him, he spoke up in as steady a voice as he could. “I—I don’t have a grandfather.”

“Of course you do,” the man said soothingly. It gave Jon an unpleasant, sticky feeling that he didn’t like. “I’m only sorry it took me so long to find you. I was…unaware that your mother existed, I’m afraid, and of course by the time I learned that she was already gone. I thought her husband and only child were gone as well, but then I learned about you. I wanted to know everything about you before I approached. To be sure that you would…truly appreciate this.”

He held out the present again. “It’s yours, Jonathan. Take it.”

Jon didn’t want to. He didn’t. But he found himself responding to the authority in the order, reaching out with trembling hands—even pulling his hand free of Melanie’s—to accept the box. It felt cool and strangely heavy for its size.

The man smiled. “Well? Don’t you want to see what’s inside of it?”

“Hey!”

Mummy’s voice shattered the fog that had tried to close around Jon’s mind. He jerked sideways, stumbling into Melanie, and looked up guiltily as Mummy strode towards the gate, a frown on her face. It wasn’t directed at him, though. “Excuse me, who the hell are you?”

“I’m Jon’s grandfather,” the man repeated.

Somehow, Mummy got out the gate and between Jon and the strange man. “Like hell you are.”

“I assure you, I am. I am his mother’s father—”

“I’m his mother,” Mummy interrupted firmly. “And my father is dead. So is my husband’s. We don’t know you and we do not appreciate you hanging around bothering us, so get away from my children and stay off our property.” Without turning away from the man, but still clearly talking to Jon and Melanie, she added, “Get on inside now and out of those dirty clothes. Lucky for you it’s laundry day.”

Melanie grabbed Jon’s wrist and practically dragged him through the gate. Jon wasn’t willing to take his eyes off the man, either, for fear of what he might do. The man’s eyes and that cold, pale smile followed him all the way up the path and through the door until Melanie let it shut behind them, effectively cutting them off.

Jon wilted. “Thanks, Melanie.”

“Of course.” Melanie scowled at the present. “Why’d you take that?”

“I—I don’t know. I just felt like I had to.” Jon stared at the present, too, then shook his head. “I’m not going to open it, though.”

Decisively, he opened up one of the cupboards in the sideboard that they never used, then shoved the present inside it and shut it firmly. “There. Now it won’t bother us.”

Melanie eyed the sideboard a little uneasily. “What do you think was in it?”

Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. Come on, let’s go get cleaned up before Mummy comes back in.”

He dragged Melanie towards the bedroom and changed the subject, chattering about the party they were going to have tomorrow. She took the hook, or at least let him think she was taking it, and at least pretended to forget about the present. Jon was glad. It meant he didn’t have to admit to her—yet—that while the first part had been true, the second part definitely wasn’t.

He did care. For right now, though, he was more afraid than curious.