Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

Elena looked into the heart of the twilit world. “We’ve come so far, and maybe together — maybe we can find the star ball that will save our town.”

“This is the door you pick?” asked Sage.

Elena looked at the rest of the group. They all seemed to be waiting for her confirmation. “Yes — and right now. We have to hurry.” She made a motion as if to put her cup down and it disappeared. She smiled thanks at Sage.

“Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t give you any help,” he said. “But if you have a compass…”

Elena had one. It was always dangling from her backpack because she was always trying to read it.

Sage took the compass in his hand and lightly traced a line on it. He gave the compass back to Elena and she found that the needle no longer pointed to the north, but at an angle northeast. “Follow the arrow,” he said. “It will take you to the trunk of the Great Tree. If I had to guess at where to find the largest star ball, I would go this way. But be wary! Others have tried this path. Their bodies have nourished the Great Tree — as fertilizer.”

Elena scarcely heard the words. She had been terrified at the thought of searching an entire planet for a star ball. Of course, it might be a very small world, like…like…

Like the little diamond moon you saw over the Nether World?

The voice in Elena’s mind was both familiar and not. She glanced at Sage, who smiled. Then she looked around the room. Everyone seemed to be waiting for her to take the first step.

She took it.

“You’ve been fed and taken care of as best as we can manage,” Meredith said, looking at all the taut, frightened young faces turned toward her in the basement.

“And now there’s just one thing I want to ask of you in return.” She made an effort and steadied her voice. “I want to know if anybody knows of a mobile phone that connects to the Internet, or a computer that is still working. Please, please — if you even think you know where one might be, tell me.”

The tension was like a thick rubber cord, dragging Meredith toward each of the pale, strained faces, dragging them to her.

It was just as well that Meredith was essentially well-balanced. About twelve hands went up immediately, and their lone five-year-old whispered, “My mommy has one. And my daddy.”

There was a pause before Meredith could say, “Does anybody know this kid?”

and an older girl spoke up before she could.

“She just means they had them before the Burning Man.”

“Is the Burning Man called Shinichi?” Meredith asked.

“’Course. Sometimes he would make the red parts of his hair burn up way over his head.”

Meredith filed that little fact away under Things I do not want to see, honest, cross my heart, ever.

Then she shook herself free from the image.

“You guys and girls, please, please think. I only need one, one mobile phone with Internet access that still has power right now. One laptop or computer that is still working now, maybe because of a generator still making electricity. Just one family with a home generator still working. Anybody?”

The hands were down now. A boy she thought she recognized as being one of the Loring siblings, maybe age ten or eleven, said, “The Burning Man told us that mobile phones and computers were bad. That was why my brother got in a fistfight with my dad. He threw all the mobiles at home in the toilet.”

“Okay. Okay, thanks. But anybody who’s seen a working mobile or computer? Or a home generator—”

“Why, yes, my dear, I’ve got one.” The voice came from the top of the stairs.

Mrs. Flowers was standing there, dressed in a fresh sweat suit. Strangely, she had her voluminous purse in her hand.

“You had — have a generator?” Meredith asked, her heart sinking. What a waste!

And if disaster came all because she, Meredith, hadn’t finished reading over her own research! The minutes were ticking away, and if everyone in Fell’s Church died, it would be her fault. Her fault. She didn’t think she could live with that.

Meredith had tried, all her life, to reach the state of calm, concentration, and balance that was the other side of the coin from the fighting skills her various disciplines had taught her. And she had become good at it, a good observer, a good daughter, even a good student for all that she was in Elena’s fast-paced, high-flying clique. The four of them: Elena, Meredith, Caroline, and Bonnie had fit together like four pieces of a puzzle, and Meredith still sometimes missed the old days and their daring, dominating pseudo-sophisticated capers that never really hurt anyone — except the silly boys who had milled around them like ants at a picnic.

But now, looking at herself, she was puzzled. Who was she? A Hispanic girl named for her mother’s Welsh best friend in college. A hunter-slayer of vampires who had kitten canines, a vampire twin, and whose group of friends included Stefan, a vampire; Elena, an ex-vampire — and possibly another vampire, although she was extremely hesitant to call Damon a “friend.”

What did that all add up to?

A girl trying to do her best to keep her balance and concentration, in a world that had gone insane. A girl still reeling from what she’d learned about her own family, and now tottering from the need to confirm a dreadful suspicion.

Stop thinking. Stop! You have to tell Mrs. Flowers that her boardinghouse has been destroyed.

“Mrs. Flowers — about the boardinghouse — I have to talk to you…”

“Why don’t you use my BlackBerry first?” Mrs. Flowers came down the basement stairs carefully, watching her feet, and then the children parted before her like waves on the Red Sea.

“Your…?” Meredith stared, choked up. Mrs. Flowers had opened her enormous purse and was now proffering a rather thick all-black object to her.

“It still has power,” the old lady explained as Meredith took the thing in two shaking hands, as if receiving a holy object. “I just turned it on and it was working.

And now I’m on the Internet!”—proudly.

Meredith’s world had been swallowed up by the small, grayish, antiquated screen.

She was so amazed and excited at seeing this that she almost forgot why she needed it. But her body knew. Her fingers clutched; her thumbs danced over the mini-keyboard. She went to her favorite search page and entered the word

“Orime.” She got pages of hits — most in Japanese. Then feeling a trembling in her knees, she typed in “Inari.”

6,530,298 results.

She went to the very first hit and saw a web page with a definition. Key words seemed to rush out at her like vultures.

Inari is the Japanese Shinto deity of rice…and…foxes. At the entrance to an Inari shrine are…statues of two kitsune…one male and one female…each with a key or jewel carried in mouth or paw…These fox-spirits are the servants and messengers of Inari. They carry out Inari’s orders….

There was also a picture of a pair of kitsune statues, in their fox forms. Each had a front paw resting on a star ball.

Three years ago, Meredith had fractured her leg when she was on a skiing trip with her cousins in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She had run straight into a small tree. No martial arts skills could save her at the last minute; she knew she was skiing off the groomed areas, where she could run into anything: powder, crud, or iced-over ruts. And, of course, trees. Lots of trees. She was an advanced skier, but she had been going too fast, looking in the wrong direction, and the next thing she knew, she was skiing into the tree instead of around it.

Now she had the same sensation of waking up after a head-on into wood. The shock, the dizziness and nausea that were, initially, worse than the pain. Meredith could take pain. But the pounding in her head, the sickening awareness that she had made a big mistake and that she was going to have to pay for it were unbearable. Plus there was a curious horror about the knowledge that her own legs wouldn’t hold her up. Even the same useless questions ran through her subconscious, like: How could I be so stupid? Is this possibly a dream? and, Please, God, can I hit the Undo button?