Wayfinders, p.12
Wayfinders, page 12
He stares blankly across the trailer and seems to consider something. “I was . . . I was driving so fast.”
“You won’t need to again.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Adrina’s safe,” she says.
Her father softly bites his lip, his gaze fixed on Chloe. “We didn’t hit anyone, right?”
Chloe shakes her head. “Not a single person.”
“And those bumps—those were potholes?”
“Every one of ’em.”
He looks in the corner of his eye, thinking. “What if the headlight burns out?”
“Then we’ll strap a sun stick to the hood.”
He grins, getting the joke. Then he stands a little straighter and takes a deep breath. His eyes dart one way, then another. “Those people in the hotel—they saw us,” he says, his thoughts landing on another worry. “They saw Adrina.”
“So what? No one had cell phones, and a dump like that isn’t going to have security cameras.”
It must be a good point because he nods the tiniest bit.
“We have to get them to Brynmoor,” Chloe says. “We’re the only people who can.”
He holds her gaze for what feels like forever. “Your eyes are on the road,” he says in a firm voice. “At all times—I mean it, Chloe.”
“Of course.”
He stares at her a moment longer. Then he turns and walks out of the trailer, saying, “Alright, let’s go.”
Chloe touches Fable to say goodbye and hurries after her father.
As they get into the Winnebago, Chloe hears a distant rumble that she assumes is another storm cloud approaching. But the noise gets louder and louder, and then a bunch of headlights appear on the road. Dozens of motorcycles and a few pickup trucks drive past, mostly concealed by the trees between them and the Winnebago. A sea of taillights glows red and finally blink out, the rumble falling silent.
“Who was that?” Dar asks, gazing out the windshield at the empty street.
“I have no idea,” Chloe says as she climbs into her chair.
It’s a lie, because the man and woman who jumped in front of the Winnebago back at her house were dressed like bikers—people in a motorcycle gang.
It wasn’t them.
As she buckles her safety belt, she realizes it doesn’t matter. She and her father are already past the point of no return. The only way out is through.
Chapter Nineteen
“Here he comes,” Chloe says.
Dar leans forward to see out the windshield. Chloe’s father, his arms full of grocery bags, exits the gas station, using his hip to hold open the door. After fueling up the Winnebago, he went inside to pay and apparently decided to do some shopping.
“What’s in the bags?” Dar asks.
“Maybe something to eat,” Chloe says.
Dar slides in between the front seats and sets a knee on the engine compartment to get closer to the windshield. “Yeh s’pose he’ll have rabbit stew?”
“Probably not.”
Her father opens the driver’s door and hands the bags off to Chloe. She checks to see what’s inside each one and then starts divvying up the snacks.
“What’s ‘Cool Ranch’?” Dar asks as she hands him a big bag of Doritos.
“Something you’re gonna like.” She tosses a bag of Funyuns to Baxley, who’s sitting on the sofa, bowing the frame. The fairies hover around him, anxious to see what he has.
“How do yeh open it?” Dar asks.
“Like this.” Chloe holds up a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos and pulls apart the top seam. Dar gets it right on the first try, but Baxley shreds his bag and Funyuns rain all around. The fairies swoop down like pigeons, each grabbing a piece. When Dar bites into a Dorito, his eyes light up, and he nods at Chloe approvingly.
Her father climbs into his seat, starts the engine, and checks the fuel gauge to make sure the tank is full. “We’re good.” He drops the gearshift into drive and glances in the rearview mirror at his uncanny passengers. “Everyone ready?”
Dar and Baxley are too busy stuffing their faces to answer. Chloe can hardly blame them. Other than a few apples, they haven’t eaten since hiding in Chloe’s barn.
Her father steers back onto the road. The landscape hasn’t changed much since leaving the scenic overlook where they dropped off Adrina about fifteen minutes ago. Both sides of the street are still lined by tall trees.
Chloe tosses a few chips into her mouth and rummages through the grocery bags. Peanuts, candy, sunflower seeds. She holds up a sandwich with two slices of pale salami and a hardened piece of orange cheese. Few things in life are as disgusting as a gas station sandwich. “Any takers?”
Both Dar and Baxley hold out their hands, and Chloe gives the sandwich to Baxley, guessing he needs the calories more. She hunts through another bag and shows them a few drinks: Pepsi, Sprite, Dr. Pepper.
“I wan’ that one!” Dar says, pointing to a root beer. Chloe opens the can and hands it over. The dwarf takes a swig and grimaces. It’s clearly not the kind of beer he had in mind.
“You want something?” she asks her dad.
“While I’m driving?” he says.
Chloe gets the message. He needs both hands on the wheel.
“How long am I on this road?” he asks.
Chloe sets the map in her lap and traces a line across the paper. “All the way to Livingston.” She checks the small clock in the dash and guesses they should reach Grand Harbor around seven thirty, just under four hours from now.
Her father nods and takes a deep breath, his hands gripping the steering wheel. “How am I doing?”
“Fine.” She sips her drink, still looking at the map. When she sees the location of Silver Falls, a thought springs into her head. “If there’s a passage to Brynmoor, how come no one in our world has found it?”
“Because it’s a hidden portal,” Dar says. “Only Brynmoorians can go through it.”
Chloe stares at Dar, feeling almost like she’s waiting for the punchline of a joke. It never comes.
“What’s wrong?” Dar asks, staring back at Chloe. He crunches down on a chip, sprinkling his beard with yellow crumbs.
“Nothing, I just . . .” She hunts for the right words to describe how she feels and decides there aren’t any.
The Winnebago shakes as it veers a bit onto the shoulder of the road. Her father, probably listening too intently to the conversation, turns the steering wheel to get the motor home back where it belongs.
“Is there only one portal?” Chloe asks.
Dar shakes his head. “Twelve that I’ve heard about. They’re spaced throughout your forest.”
Baxley leans forward, his weight causing the sofa to creak and bend in new ways, and angrily eyes Dar. “How about you stop talking for a change?”
“Are yeh gonna fault her for having a few questions?” Dar asks. “She saved Adrina’s life! Now she’s tryin’ to save yers and mine!”
Baxley goes to say something more and decides against it. He sits sideways on the couch and stares out the window next to him. If Dar’s going to share secrets about Brynmoor, Baxley clearly doesn’t want to be a part of it.
“What happened?” Chloe asks, eyeing Dar and Baxley. “How did you end up in our world?”
“The fires in your forest also burned in ours,” Dar says. “We escaped through the portal.”
“What’s it like?” Chloe asks. “Brynmoor.”
Dar swigs his root beer and belches without covering his mouth. “Big,” he says at last. “Mountains and valleys and towns.”
Images of the sprawling landscapes of Narnia and Middle Earth rise in her head. “Are there castles?”
“Aye.”
“Knights on horseback?”
“Of course.”
“What about sorcerers?”
Dar nods, crunching into a chip.
Chloe’s jaw drops a little, and she glances over at her father, who looks just as stunned. “How is it . . .” she says to Dar. “How is it there?”
“I might ask the same about your world,” Dar says, sounding slightly offended.
“It’s another dimension, isn’t it?” her father says, his gaze fixed out the windshield. “Brynmoor, I mean.”
Dar shrugs a shoulder, as if to say it might be possible, and bites into another chip.
“Who else lives in Brynmoor?” Chloe asks. “What other . . . creatures?”
Dar munches on another Dorito, growing the crumb collection in his beard. “You mean races?”
“Yeah, that” Chloe says.
Dar goes through a list. Elves, dryads, goblins, gnomes, trolls, Valkyries, even a few dragons. The thought is exhilarating—and horrifying. Would all these creatures end up in the ordinary world if all of Gwynwood Forest burned down?
Chloe’s father, his eyes still locked on the road, asks to hear more about the dragons, and Dar says, “Winged, fire-breathing, sleep near the mountains. They’re the garden variety, I s’pose.”
Chloe isn’t sure there’s such a thing as a garden variety of dragons, but she doesn’t mention it.
Dar tells her that the gnomes live in Parshon, the goblins live in Lanksmire, and the trolls live in the Ringeh caves. Chloe shakes her head, thinking that Brynmoor sounds more and more like Middle Earth. She keeps expecting Dar to mention hobbits.
“The giants dwell in Barnor,” Dar adds. “And the dwarfs”—he touches his thumb to his chest—“we live in huts scattered along the hills near Lanshor.”
Chloe continues to stare at Dar, a hundred questions swirling in her head. “And everyone . . . gets along?”
Baxley chuckles under his breath, still gazing out the window behind the sofa. It seems like his way of answering the question.
Dar shakes his head. “I s’pose we stay to our own kind.”
Chloe glances at Baxley again, thinking she now knows at least part of the reason he and Dar don’t get along.
“What else?” Chloe asks.
Dar talks about the places, the people, the politics. Brynmoor has cities with brick streets and horse-drawn carriages. He tells them that unicorns are rare, and that their magical horns can heal sick people and purify polluted water.
Chloe turns to see her father’s reaction. His eyes are glazed over, and he’s slowly shaking his head. She can only imagine how hard his mind is working. If life were a cartoon—which it’s getting closer and closer to becoming—tendrils of smoke would be rising from his ears.
“You okay?” Chloe asks.
Her father continues to stare out the windshield, his jaw hanging open.
“Dad—you alright?”
The vacant look in his eyes doesn’t change. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should pull over.”
He takes a long time to think about it. Then he switches on his turn signal, even though there isn’t a vehicle in sight, and pulls onto the shoulder of the road.
Chloe reaches over and touches his arm. “Get some air,” she says. “Stretch your legs.”
“Why?” he asks, still staring straight ahead.
“It’ll clear your head.”
He nods a few times. Then he opens his door and slips out of his seat. He strolls in front of the Winnebago, his body illuminated by the one working headlight.
Dar springs out of his chair and steps in between the front seats, the can of root beer in his left hand. “Is he okay?”
Chloe eyes the dwarf for a few seconds. His helmet, his bushy eyebrows, his red beard. For some reason Chloe wants to snatch away the root beer and pour it over his head. “He just . . . worries.”
“About what?” Dar asks.
“About a lot of things.”
Her father takes a few more steps away from the motor home and turns to face the woods. He plants his hands on his knees and leans over, his cheeks puffing out as he lets go of a deep breath. Then he stands so tall that he arches backward, his hands laced behind his head. It always hurts Chloe to see him so full of anxiety.
“Come on, Dad,” she whispers. “You got this.”
He rubs his temples and leans forward again, his chest rising and falling with each hurried breath.
“Keep it together,” she whispers. “You can do this.”
Keeping it together would have seemed more possible before his problems worsened about a year ago when his anxiety peaked and the panic attacks set in. The doctors didn’t know the reason, not really, but they tried to fix it with pills that take up all the space in her parents’ medicine cabinet. Drugs with long names that were meant to heal her father. To help him stay focused. To make him stop worrying. To get him driving a car again.
The pills helped, and then they didn’t.
Things changed, and then they stayed the same.
Her father took one step forward and another step back, dragging Chloe and her mother along with him. That’s the way it is with a mental health issue. And that’s the way it is when you’re part of a family.
“How long is this gonna take?” Dar calls out.
“As long as it needs to,” Chloe says.
Dar takes a swig of his root beer and burps near Chloe’s ear. She wrinkles her nose at him, saying, “That’s disgusting.”
“What’s disgusting?”
It’s not surprising that he doesn’t know what she’s referring to. Manners might not be a thing in Brynmoor—at least not for dwarfs.
Her gaze bounces between Dar and Baxley, who’s still sitting on the couch, and a question comes to her mind. “If you’re not friends, then what were you doing together when the forest caught fire?”
“We weren’t together,” Dar says. “I was out for a stroll, by myself.”
Chloe looks at his mining helmet. “Wearing that?”
“The woods are dark in the morning.” He taps the light with two fingers. “This helps.” Dar looks into the corner of his eye, seems to remember something, and adds, “I came across Baxley and Adrina. They were helping Fable, who was stuck in the river beneath a tree.”
Chloe blinks. “A tree?”
“It fell,” Baxley says, sitting up on the couch. “Fable was drinking from the river, and he couldn’t get out of the way.”
Chloe pictures the falling tree landing on Fable and wonders how he wasn’t crushed. Maybe the river softened the impact.
“Adrina noticed him first,” Baxley says. “And then I rushed over to help.”
“That was when the forest caught fire,” Dar says. “All at once and all around us—which meant the fire was started in your world and was crossing the Divide.”
“The what?” Chloe asks.
“The Divide,” Dar repeats. “The boundary between our worlds.”
Dar and Baxley stay quiet for a moment, as if to give Chloe some time for that to sink in.
“The fires were raging by the time we got Fable out from under the tree,” Baxley says. “The fairies, seeing what was happening, flew over and led us to our only possible escape. A portal.”
Chloe builds the image in her head: three fairies being pursued by a dwarf, a unicorn, and a giant with a mermaid in his arms. It feels like something from a movie. “Did Fable know to follow you?”
Dar shakes his head. “Luckily, I keep a rope on my belt. I looped it over his neck.”
“The portal was destroyed by the fire,” Baxley says, returning to his place in the story. “That’s why we couldn’t go back.”
Chloe nods, thinking that everything makes sense, and notices her father walking back to the Winnebago. The driver’s door opens, and he climbs into his seat.
“Better?” Chloe asks.
He takes a deep breath, expanding the megamart lettering on his chest. “Not really,” he decides.
“You look better,” Chloe says, hoping the lie will help.
He puts his hands on the steering wheel and then pulls them away. “I can’t do this.”
“Think Honda,” Chloe says. “Pretend this is your commute to work.”
He looks in the rearview mirror at the fairy-tale creatures. “I never agreed to carpool.”
It’s a joke, or at least it feels like it, and that means he’s doing better. “I’m your copilot,” she reminds him. “Remember that.”
“No more talking about Brynmoor!” He glances at her, almost accusingly. “It distracts me.”
“I promise,” Chloe says, and she pretends to button her lips.
He fastens his seat belt and rolls the tension out of his shoulders.
“Bob,” Dar says, and for a horrible moment Chloe is sure he’ll say something to upset her father. But Dar does the opposite instead. “I believe in you.”
Maybe it’s true, and maybe it isn’t. But it’s enough for her father to believe in himself right back, and that’s what gets the gearshift into drive.
Chapter Twenty
“Look.” Chloe points to the street sign beside the road, which reads:
GRAND HARBOR LIGHTHOUSE - 5 MILES
SILVER FALLS - 8 MILES
“We’re almost there,” she adds.
Her father sits up a little straighter and stays focused on his driving. It’s almost eight o’clock in the morning. Traffic is picking up on the two-lane street heading into Grand Harbor, and the blinding sun has drivers scrambling for their sunglasses. Homes with small yards and concrete porches line both sides of the road.
Dar steps up between the front seats and puts a hand on Chloe’s chair. “Will Adrina be there?”
Chloe nods. There’s no reason not to hope for the best.
A yard sign at a street corner reads, fall festival—september 23.
“That’s today,” her father says, gazing at the sign. “Great—downtown’s going to be packed!”
“It’s still early,” Chloe says, though the idea worries her, too. “Maybe we can beat the crowd.”
Her father sighs, almost angrily. “I hate driving this thing in traffic!”
“It’ll be okay.” Chloe isn’t sure she believes it. The downtown streets will be narrow, and the Winnebago makes wide right turns even without the horse trailer attached. The last thing they need is to hit someone standing on a street corner.
Her father stops at a red light and takes a deep breath. The way he stays quiet worries Chloe.
