Authors: Wen Spencer
Wood Sprites (6 page)
“You’re telling us,” Louise pointed out.
“Oh, yinz are the exception to the rule.” April got up to start poking among her bookcase. “She said that if any of her kids were to show up at my door, I was to tell them everything. Answer every question. And—where is it—oh, here.” April pulled out a square wooden box. “And to give you this.”
“This” was a Chinese puzzle box, lacquered with a beautiful pattern. April held it out to them and, when neither took it, set it down on the coffee table between them.
“Are you sure she meant us and not our older sister?” Louise asked.
“She said ‘any kid.’ I think she even added something like ‘one or two, together or alone, boy or girl.’” April frowned for a moment. “Where exactly did you come from?”
Louise glanced at Jillian. They hadn’t come up with a cover story for that.
“We’d rather not say,” Jillian said.
“Our parents stole us,” Louise said.
April rubbed at the ridge of her nose. “It’s like your whole family has been cursed to live weird and bizarre lives.”
“We are not weird,” Louise said.
“Oh, so it’s perfectly normal for kids your age to disguise themselves as Girl Scouts and ambush people at their front door?”
“We are not disguised as Girl Scouts,” Louise snapped. “We
are
Girl Scouts. There’s a difference. Do you want to order cookies or not?”
“Yeah, I’ll take two boxes of Thin Mints.”
* * *
They managed to talk April into two boxes of Thin Mints, a box of Samoas, and a box of Trefoils. Then they copied all the pictures of their sister onto their tablets and collected all the personal data on “Mr. Bell,” including his phone number and address and his granddaughter’s full name, Alexander Graham Bell. Despite being out all night, April insisted on walking them back to the subway station. They barely kept her from escorting them the entire way home, escaping her protection only by promising to go straight home.
“Alexander Graham Bell.” Louise rolled the name around, trying to get used to the idea that they had an older sister, nearly eighteen. “Do you think she goes by Alex or Al or Alexi or Xander?”
“Xander?”
“I would,” Louise said. “Don’t you think it’s cool? Xander Bell.”
“Alexander Graham Bell is a stupid name. The acting guild would make you change it. The inventor would spam all hits on your name.”
“It would be a way no one could find you. If the first thousand hits were the inventor, people would give up looking for you. I think it’s ingenious.”
Jillian glared at her and then kicked at the seat in front of them. “It should be Dufae. Tim Bell is obviously Timothy Dufae, Leonardo’s father. Why is he going by the name Bell?”
“He’s hiding.”
“From whom?”
“Whoever killed Leonardo?”
They had just boarded the last train, switching off the feed from mini-Tesla and reactivating Tesla’s link with their parents, when Louise’s phone rang. She squeaked with alarm: had their parents caught them?
“Hello?” she said tentatively.
Jillian scowled at her; apparently she sounded guilty. Why had her mom picked her to call? Because she knew Jillian lied better?
“Are you still at work?” Louise added to explain her tone. Jillian leaned against her to hear the full conversation. “I thought you’d be at the Forest Forever event until late.”
“Louise! Is Jillian with you?” their mother asked, voice full of concern. “Are you two okay?”
“Yes.” They answered the first question in unison.
“We’re fine,” Jillian said as Louise examined the question for traps. They hadn’t done anything to warrant a phone call, so something must have happened elsewhere.
“Where are you?” their mother asked with sirens blaring near her.
Louise was glad she could stick to the truth since they were on the correct train to take them to Astoria. “We’re on the N train, heading home. We just left Queensboro Plaza. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” And then hesitantly, she added, “There was an idiot protester with a car bomb, but the police took care of it. It pushed our schedule back nearly two hours. I probably won’t be home until tomorrow. The company is paying for a room for me to sleep here tonight.”
“Okay,” Louise said. “But why are you asking if we’re okay?”
“According to a linked story, some of the protestors attacked a nine-year-old at Grand Central–42nd Street Station. Reports are conflicting. Some of them are saying it was a boy who was taken to a hospital, and others are saying it was a girl and she wasn’t hurt. I know you were nowhere near there, but I got worried and had to call to check on you.”
Louise winced. Since they’d taken the 7 train into the city from the cookie sales in Queens, they’d been at Grand Central–42nd Street Station earlier. It had been full of police, but Louise had been so focused on their mission that she hadn’t considered why. The N train connected to 6 local at Lexington Avenue, so they avoided Grand Central on their return. “We’re fine. We’re almost home.”
“I’ll call your father and have him meet you at the Astoria-Ditmars station.”
“Okay. ’Bye.” She hung up and stuffed the Chinese puzzle box into the small storage bin in Tesla’s torso. “Oh, God, that was close.”
Jillian was doing a little victory dance. “But we weren’t caught! We did it! We know all about our older sister, and we got something from our genetic donor.”
But they hadn’t gotten any closer to saving their baby brother and sisters. Maybe something in Esme’s mystery box would help them.
The Chinese puzzle box took them the rest of the day to unlock.
“Esme’s lucky we’re smart,” Jillian complained.
“Maybe if we weren’t smart, she didn’t want us to open it.” Louise spread out the contents.
There were six old-fashioned 2D photographs within the box and an odd rectangle of metal slightly bigger than their pinkies.
“What’s this?” Jillian picked up the mystery item and eyed it closely.
“I don’t know.” Louise watched as Jillian carefully pulled the object into two parts. One piece was a cap that fit over some type of socket at the end.
“I think it plugs into something.” Jillian eyed the pronged ending.
Louise picked up the box and examined it closely for hidden connectors. “This doesn’t have any place to plug anything into it.”
Jillian shook her head. “If I was going to leave something for my kids before getting into a spaceship and leaving Earth forever, I’d leave a hell of lot more. Like pictures of you and our parents, and copies of my movies and Fritz.”
Fritz was Jillian’s toddler-sized handmade quilt. Their Grandmother Mayer had made both of them one before she died. Louise abandoned her blanket in some long-forgotten period of time, but Jillian’s became a fifth member of the family. For years, Jillian never went anywhere without carrying Fritz. It was how everyone told them apart—a fact they used to their advantage often. By the time they were five and starting first grade, Fritz was tattered. Their mother sewed him inside a pillowcase. While they hadn’t actually seen Fritz for years, Jillian still slept every night hugging him close.
“Who are you,” Louise asked, “and what have you done with my sister?”
Jillian stuck out her tongue. “I know that Esme is still alive out there someplace, but it’s like she’s dead. She’s gone and never coming back, and that’s a lot like dead and buried. Taking Fritz would be like destroying him, too.”
“I would take him. I would want the company. My kid can get her own blanket.”
Jillian laughed and waved the odd piece of metal. “Well, that explains this box then. She took all the cool stuff and only left us this garbage.”
Louise held out her hand, and Jillian gave her the mystery item. “I think it’s an old computer part. They used to have all sorts of cables and plugs and things.” She took out her phone and took several photos of it. “I’ll run it through Whatsit.”
Jillian spread the 2D photographs out onto the bedspread. They were portraits of three men, two boys, and a woman whose eyes had been masked by black Magic Marker. Between the glossy photos was a folded scrap of paper. Jillian unfolded the note and read it. “Beware the Empire of Evil. They will destroy everything you love to get ahold of you.”
Louise shivered. “That is seriously creepy.” She picked up the photo of a man in a space suit, patches identifying him as one of the NASA astronauts, apparently from before the Chinese took dominance in space. The patches were too small to read no matter how hard she squinted at them. “Wow, these are old. There are no digital tags to identify these people. What you see is all you get.”
“There’s writing on the back,” Jillian said.
Louise flipped the photo over. “How low tech. She went into space when?”
“Eighteen years ago. What does it say?”
“‘The King of Denmark, Neil Shenske.’ I think this is Esme’s father. Her bio said that her father was an astronaut. This is our grandfather.”
“We’re Danish princesses?” Jillian was obviously wavering between fantastical possibility and the logic that princesses weren’t born from abandoned embryos. Louise was riding the same emotional rollercoaster.
“Nothing on Esme said anything about her being a princess.” Louise forced herself to point out the most logical evidence they had.
They both did searches, racing to find more information.
“American astronaut, inspired by Apollo Moon shots, flew two space-shuttle missions.”
“Born in Ohio. Went to MIT. Married Anna Cohan. Had two daughters, Lain and Esme.”
“He was killed in a drive-by shooting at a science fair at an inner-city school. Esme was four when he died.”
“I’m not finding any reference to him being the king of Denmark.”
“He’s not even Danish.”
Louise flipped the photo and frowned at the words. “Maybe it’s some kind of code.”
“What do the others say?” Jillian picked up the photo of a dark-haired young man who looked like a movie star caught in a candid moment, his focus intently on something off-camera. Jillian read the back and giggled.
“What does it say?”
“‘Crown Prince Kiss Butt of the Evil Empire.’” Jillian giggled more. “It also says, ‘Yes, you’re smarter, but he’s sadistic and short-tempered. Don’t get snarky with him.’ Esme must have thought we’d be snarky as well as clever. We’re not snarky.”
“Elle Pondwater thinks we’re snarky.”
“Elle is rarely right about anything. Besides, snarky is not genetic.”
Louise rather thought it might be but didn’t want to argue the point. The two blond boys were more average looking. There was, however, a strong family resemblance with the crown prince. “Flying Monkey Four and Five. Where are one, two, and three?”
Jillian shrugged, and they made sure there were no other photos, either still in the box or somehow stuck to the others. Esme had drawn black Magic Marker across the eyes of the woman and trailed it off so the line nearly looked like cloth ribbon blindfolding her. Louise studied the photo, trying to understand their mother. What was the point of a photo if they couldn’t see all of the woman’s face? The black line did emphasize the woman’s elegance. Her mouth was flawlessly defined by lipstick into a perfect bow that nature hadn’t blessed her with. She had a strong, determined chin. Every hair of her pale blond bob was in place. She wore a black silk blouse and an amber teardrop necklace. The back of her photo read: “Queen Gertrude of Denmark, blind to her husband’s crimes led to Hamlet’s death. Careful, lest her blindness lead to your capture.”
“Hamlet?” Louise said. “Like the play? Do you think she’s an actress?”
“I think you’re right. It’s some kind of code.”
“Some code. Hi, I went off to space and left you in the fridge, here’s a nice puzzle to hurt your brain.”
Jillian giggled and then sobered. “She probably left the box for Alexander, not us.” She pulled up the digital photos of Alexander. The one of her labeled “nine years old” could have been Louise with her blast-shortened hair. “We really don’t look like Esme or her father at all.”
“Crown Prince Kiss Butt and the flying monkeys look like brothers. They have the same cheekbones, and their eyes look vaguely Asian.”
Jillian nodded in agreement. “There’s no flying monkeys in
Hamlet
, though. At least none that I remember.” She struck a dramatic pose. “To be or not to be, that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.” Jillian paused in mid-dramatic gesture. “Oh! I wonder. Hamlet’s story is about him trying to deal with the murder of his father—the King of Denmark. The odds are so stacked against him that he pretends to be insane for a part of the play.”
“It ends badly for Hamlet?”
“Very badly. But there’s no monkeys—flying or otherwise.”
Louise trusted Jillian to know any trivia connected to
Hamlet
. She tried searching the other direction. “Most of the hits for ‘flying monkey’ are for
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
. It’s about a young girl who is swept up by a storm and deposited on another world filled with magical creatures.”
“Maybe that’s a reference to Elfhome.”
“You know what’s odd?” Jillian studied Anna’s photo and then the boys who might be brothers. “Neil and Anna are the only ones that are looking at the camera. The rest of these seem to be taken without the person aware that they’re being photographed.”
Louise checked the last photo. The man was sitting at a table in a large sunroom, reading a paper, steam curling up from a cup in front of him. He was striking to look at, with unnaturally white skin and odd amber eyes. His coloring made him seem unreal, like he was a vampire or something. His hair was white, as if he was old, but his face was unlined, making it impossible to guess his age. He was reading an old-fashioned newspaper and seemed unaware of the camera. “I think you’re right. They’re like stalker pictures.”
“What does that one say?”
Louise flipped over the picture of the man with the newspaper. “This one says: ‘Ming the Merciless of the Empire of Evil.’”
“It’s another literature reference.” Jillian frowned at the screen of her tablet. “Ming is an evil emperor from a movie series called
Flash Gordon
filmed in the mid-1900s. Ming has a large army with everything from death rays to robots poised to take over Earth. But he doesn’t look anything like this guy.”
Louise stared at the photos. “Our genetic donor was weird.”
* * *
Whatsit identified the item in the box as a “flash drive” with a “USB connector” and had diagrams on how it used to plug into the side of the clunky computers which were common at the turn of the century.
“It could have anything on it.” Louise read through the description of the technology’s development. Assuming that Esme used the most advanced one she could buy at the time, it could represent a large amount of data. “Photographs. A video blog.”
“But we don’t have anything to plug it into!” Jillian growled.
“We could buy an old computer . . . or something,” Louise murmured. They couldn’t be the only people who had had this problem. It turned out that it had been a common difficulty shortly after computers started to use wireless connections exclusively. Adapters had been made so the flash drives could be plugged in to a transmitter and accessed. They would need to download emulators so their tablets could run the decades-old software, but it was just juggling data once a connection was made.
She found several places still selling adapters and whimpered at the price. It wasn’t expensive, but it still was a lot more than she had left in her mobile payment account. Louise checked Jillian’s account to see if they could pool their money. “We don’t have enough money.”
Jillian winced. “It’s going to take weeks to have enough with our allowance.”
“If Mom and Dad don’t dock us for the cost of the playhouse.”
“Shh!” Jillian whispered. “Don’t give them ideas.”
“Maybe we can sell something.”
“No,” Jillian said. “All we have left after the fire is our video-processing equipment, and we’re not selling that. We don’t know what’s on the flash drive, and it might be useless crap.” She glared at the photos, the flash drive, and the scrap of paper with the cryptic warning. “Our stupid genetic donor.”