Chameleon (21 page)

The sound of the two dueling below receded. I heard only a low sigh that came from inside one of us: I wasn’t sure who. And Will’s mouth tasted like the whisper of willows through my mind, and sunshine, and coming home. I thought he was kissing me back, and then I was sure of it.

His lips on mine felt like the slow embrace of rippling through glass.

My hands on his face trembled.

Then they didn’t.

I’d rippled.

Without a backward glance at the boy I loved, I shot up the stairs and hovered over the gap in the tower. Then, I set my invisible foot upon the ledge and stepped out into thin air.

Only it wasn’t. The air felt thick as maple syrup and moving through it was a lot like swimming, like Sir Walter had said.

While I toppled earth–ward, Sir Walter and Helga battled on, rippling and solidifying in a bizarre dance.

“She’s gone by now,” said Sir Walter. “You’ve lost, cousin Helga.”

Helga’s cold eyes blazed as she came solid, slamming her foot within the graveled road so that pebbles exploded in an arc towards Sir Walter, like spray from a water–skier. Rippling, he dodged, although the look on his face showed the move had surprised him.

I slid invisibly towards the far side of the car. Hunching low at the front passenger door, I came solid. Through the window, I could see the first aid kit spilled open below the seat. Sure enough, a small vial of
sal volatile
nestled between a thermometer and package of gauze. I eased the car door open as silently as possible. Helga was now shouting in German at Sir Walter, who had disappeared for longer than usual. Then Helga fell silent, and all I heard was her breath, fast and angry, and the whisper of wind through the shrubs. I reached for the first aid kit, stopping myself from shutting the car door, which Helga would have heard. Leaving it ajar, I crept backwards, towards a tall patch of scrubby brush. With the warmth of Will’s lips still upon my own, I knew rippling would come easily.

I reached the brush and eased myself behind. I’d made it!

Just before I closed my eyes to calm and ripple, a movement beside the car caught my eye. Straining my head around the shrub, I watched, horrified, as the car door began, slowly and unstoppably, to fall shut on its own.

No, no, no!
I thought. Every muscle in my body tensed as I waited, hoping against hope that Helga would start shouting again and miss the sound. She didn’t. The door slammed noisily shut. No one could have missed that.

Helga spun and fired at the source of the noise, the bullet’s impact creating sparks and sudden flame. Some idiotic California–bred impulse to warn people about fire made me twitch from behind the brush that hid me.

Helga saw me, eyes ablaze with her lust to possess me. But I felt an inferno in my own belly. Today, I was the lioness. I had someone to protect, and Helga was not going to get in my way. I felt my lips pull back as she fired again, missing me. Yes, I was actually baring my teeth as I prepared to ripple away.

What happened next seemed impossible.

Out of nowhere, there came a thunderous noise like a cannon blast, and the Citroën, and Helga Gottlieb with it, exploded into an yellow ball of heat. The blast knocked me backwards, and I lay staring stupidly at a sky the color of a robin’s egg.

In the movies, explosions happen in slow motion. This felt like it happened in fast–forward. One moment Helga stared into my eyes, craving victory. The next moment, she was gone, without even the chance to ripple, and I lay on my back without any clear memory of the moment I’d hit the ground.

I tipped my head in the direction of the waves of hot air rolling toward me. A mistake. The sky spun in dizzy circles, and I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing in the smoldering odor of gasoline and things that weren’t meant to burn. I lay there a moment, aware that there was something
important
that I needed to do.

“Will!” His name caught in my throat.

Chapter Twenty–Five

REST IN PEACE

I sat up, my head still spinning, and took several slow, deep breaths holding my shirt over my nose and mouth. I had to get to Will.

Sir Walter rippled solid beside me upon the ground.

“
Merci, Seigneur,
” he whispered.
Thank God.
To me he said, “
Mon Dieu
, but you frightened me!”

“Here,” I said, handing him the first–aid kit. “Will’s been shot. He’s faint and he can’t ripple. I thought maybe—”

Sir Walter cut me off. “
Sal volatile
! Of course.”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” I said. “Just go—make sure Will’s okay.”

Sir Walter was gone.

I felt steadier with each moment. Ignoring the fire, I calmed myself and felt my body slipping into nothingness. The dizziness passed immediately, and I dashed to the tower, scrambled up the side and through the tiny window. Sir Walter had already removed Will’s shirt and was unwinding a measure of gauze while pressing a pad to the gunshot wound.

I came solid beside the two.

“Go to Deuxième,” said Sir Walter, without looking up.

“Will!” I tried to speak, but my voice caught, the words jumbling, tangling.

“Go to Deuxième!” said Sir Walter as he began the bandaging. “Quickly!”

“What?” I asked, grasping Will’s lifeless hand in mine.

“Go! Deuxième trusts you. Leave Will to my care.”

“You’re—I’m not—No!” I said. “I can’t leave Will like this.”

Will’s eyes fluttered open.

“Samantha, Deuxième is dying!” said Sir Walter.

“What about Will?”

Sir Walter turned from Will and looked at me, his face grave. “Will’s alive. Deuxième may not be; Go, child. None of us deserves to die alone.”

My heart felt as if Sir Walter had plunged an icy dagger into its center, but I stood.

“Hurry!” he called. “Seek the scent of our earlier trail.”

Sir Walter thought I’d have to tunnel through to the cavern.

“There’s a faster way,” I called as I crossed the courtyard heading for the stairs. And yet, as I raced to re–enter the cavern of the well, I found that I
could
smell a whisper of Will’s warm pine–y scent and Sir Walter’s cologne. The ghostly waftings led me as I took the stairs below ground.

Deuxième lay beside the pool. His face, sickly, turned to the water.

“
Si beau
,” he whispered.
So beautiful
.

“I’m here, Deuxième,” I said, sinking to his side.

“It is well,” he said, a tiny smile upon his white lips.

His face appeared gray to me now.

“How cold Deuxième feels,” he said.

I wrenched off my jacket, thick and warm. “Here,” I said. “This will help.”

“Ah, Jane Smith.” He said my name in a sigh. “Deuxième is tired. So tired.”

“Rest, my friend,” I whispered to him. As I tried to tuck my jacket under his body, I gasped at the amount of blood already soaked into his garments.

“Deuxième would like to be free, as Jane said he is not,” whispered the dying man.

“You’re free of her,” I said. “She … she’s dead now.”

“Ah, freedom.
La Liberté
,” he whispered. “It has a good feeling, does it not, Jane Smith?”

“Yes, Deuxième,” I said. Twin tears dropped from my eyes, landed upon his face.

“Jane weeps,” he said.

“Yes, Deuxième, Jane weeps.” Gently, I wiped the side of his face.

“Do not weep, Jane Smith. Deuxième wishes to rest now. Speak to me of a resting place.”

“A resting place?” I stammered, wondering what he wanted. And then a memory returned to me from last summer.

“There’s a place in Yosemite,” I began. “A place where every summer the snow melt chases down into a shallow valley to become Illilouette Creek. Beside the creek it is so peaceful your heart aches.” I took Deuxième’s hand. “And the creek bottom is lined with rocks of every color you can imagine. Golds and browns and tans, pinks and yellows and creams, all spotted with shining bits of black embedded in the granite millions of years ago.

“The water runs clear and pure, because it’s from melted snow, and sometimes you don’t think you’re looking at water at all. It’s like glass, that water, until a breeze comes singing down the valley, setting the trees alive with chatter.” I laughed, knowing I sounded ridiculous, but this was what I had to offer. “I have no idea what the trees are saying, Deuxième. It sounds solemn and peaceful, though. And the same breeze that makes the trees murmur comes down to the creek and wrinkles the surface so that you remember it isn’t glass at all.” Pausing, I heard a different kind of breath rattle from Deuxième’s lips, and I knew he was gone. The Well of Juno fell silent. I gazed at the fallen star in the pool beside his body.

Sitting with him in the silent chamber of the well, I wept. “Rest, Deuxième,” I said at last. “Rest in peace.”

I stood to leave, feeling a sudden surge of panic about Will.

I don’t remember my race up the stairs, across the courtyard, and up the first few stairs in the tower. Will lay resting, his head pillowed upon Sir Walter’s jacket.

Sir Walter looked up at me, his brows raised in a silent question.

“Deuxième is gone,” I choked out the words. I couldn’t form sounds to ask about Will.

The old gentleman closed his eyes, sighing, then turned back to his patient. “Will?”

Will’s eyes, tired and strained, opened slowly.

“It is time,” said Sir Walter.

Will turned to me and I felt my face flush. I could think only of our kiss when I looked at him, but it was impossible to look away.

Sir Walter waved the
sal volatile
below Will’s nose, and Will’s eyes brightened. He sat up, blinking in the sunlight.

“Ready when you are,” Will said.

Sir Walter nodded and explained to me, “Your friend will feel much better in his chameleon form. You and I, meanwhile, must bury poor Deuxième. I have asked Will to remain in physical contact with you whilst he is invisible. When you and I have finished our task, we shall join him to return to
Mademoiselle
Mackenzie.”

I felt my cheeks burning hotter with the mention of physical contact, but nodded that I understood: this would be the best way to be sure Will remained “with” us. Then I thought of something. “Uh, Sir Walter?”

“Yes, my child?”

“We’ll need, like, a shovel or something, won’t we?”

He smiled. “I have something else in mind. Come.”

I stood to follow Sir Walter as Will rippled and disappeared. A moment later I felt the chill of Will’s touch upon my shoulder.
A cold shoulder.
Was there some awful symbolism happening here? Would Will brush our friendship aside now that I’d crossed an unspoken line by kissing him?

He kissed you back!
I tried to find comfort in the idea, but did kissing back count when you were only semi–conscious? I pushed the thoughts aside. I had a job to do.

Sir Walter, as he crossed the barren courtyard, looked around as if to snatch memories from his former home. What would it be like if I came back to my house in Las Abs six hundred years from now? The pool would still be there, maybe, as a big hole in the ground. I shuddered again and jogged to catch up to the old gentleman.

As we re–entered the chamber of the well and approached Deuxième’s body, Sir Walter sighed long and low. How many deaths had he seen, I wondered? And yet this thousandth death, of a man half his enemy, could touch and grieve the old man. My heart filled with love for Sir Walter.

“My dear
Samanthe,
” he began, “With your assistance, I propose that we ripple with Deuxième’s body between us and place him within these walls for his final rest.”

“So, we’d have to be, like, both holding him, right?” I asked. “But what if we don’t ripple at the same time?” I didn’t want to think it through too carefully in case it involved something messy.

“I shall time my shift to yours.” He smiled and added, “I am rather fast, my dear.”

Yeah. I’d seen that a few minutes ago.

We knelt on opposite sides of Deuxième’s body. As I slipped my arms beneath the body, I kept thoughts of kissing Will from materializing. Will’s wintry touch upon my shoulder meant he’d “see” what I thought. Instead, I let my eyes rest upon the water beyond Sir Walter. Wispy hints of steam rose off of the still pool.

So peaceful
, I thought. A sigh escaped me, and then I felt my flesh fading. Across from me, Sir Walter followed. Deuxième rippled with us, an airy nothing.

“Arise,”
said Sir Walter, his voice clear and firm within my mind.
“We shall place him behind the Madonna.”

As I glanced up, I saw a faded mural upon the chamber wall opposite us. We drifted toward it and then plunged within the wall. I smelled the chalk–dry whisper of stone.

“Release him
,” commanded Sir Walter.

I let slip my hands.
Goodbye Deuxième,
I said in silence.

I heard Sir Walter murmur familiar phrases.
Latin
, I thought.

I saw a message scrawled in Will’s handwriting:
He’s chanting a Requiem Mass.

I waited, a silent witness. The solemn words rolled through me, and I thought of how this would please Deuxième, who had known so little of comfort or kindness. And then Sir Walter pronounced an
Amen
and it was time for us to depart.

Our trio flowed silently upwards. Through dank earth that smelled like Sylvia’s garden when she turned it in early spring, through rotting leaves and the moisture of new growth. And then we burst forth into daylight.

We’d emerged in smoke–tainted air beside the corpses of Helga and Sir Walter’s Citroën.

I turned my eyes from Helga’s burnt skeleton.

Will, Samanthe,
called Sir Walter.
If you will wait a few moments, I shall attend to this … mess.

I felt Sir Walter pull away from us, coming solid. Repeating the water–ski maneuver I’d seen Helga doing earlier, Sir Walter scattered graveled earth, putting out the last bits of smoldering–car. Then, using a similar technique, he created a shallow grave and pushed Helga’s remains within. A few more moments and the bones and evil dreams of Helga Gottlieb lay buried beneath the graveled earth of Sir Walter’s childhood home.