What others are saying about The Demon Queen and The Locksmith:
"Ordinary teens become extraordinary in this thrilling tale of good versus evil...Skillfully written, this novel will captivate teens, including reluctant readers.”
(Publishers Weekly)
“... a wonderful sense of mystery and anticipation...has a fresh, creative feel. The DEMON QUEEN AND THE LOCKSMITH is well written, fast paced and full of suspense.”
(Amazon Vine Program)
“…I couldn't put it down...Spencer Baum writes with an eye to ideas, but he never loses his sense of fun and adventure. His teens are both believable and likeable. Most importantly, Baum lets the action carry the themes; he is never preachy. This is a great book for young adults and the young at heart!”
(Elisheva Levin, Ragamuffin Studies)
The Demon Queen and The Locksmith is a 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Semifinalist.
* * * * *
THE DEMON QUEEN AND THE LOCKSMITH
by
Spencer Baum
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Spencer Baum on Smashwords
The Demon Queen and The Locksmith
Copyright © 2009 by Spencer Baum
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. See the link below for more details:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
www.spencerbaum.net
* * * * *
THE DEMON QUEEN AND THE LOCKSMITH
* * * * *
Chapter 1
Kevin Browne arrived at the park with a rust-colored stain on his shirt and a thick film of bloody saliva in his throat. He had been in his first ever fistfight that morning. He lost. Blackstone Park was the end point of his retreat. Hidden inside a forgettable neighborhood and shaded with the tallest, thickest elm trees in Turquoise, Blackstone Park was safe from the prying eyes of adults who might wonder why a fourteen-year-old was out and about on this, the first day of the school year. Blackstone Park was also far from campus, far from the stares and snickers of his classmates at Turquoise High School, far from those who stood witness to the pummeling he had received at the hands of Ruben Graves.
At least, that’s what Kevin imagined as he ambled through the alleys behind Jefferson Avenue. Just off the school grounds, he had seen a sparrow bathing in the remains of a mud puddle. His head, fogged in panic and pain, twisted that sparrow into a ridiculous vision that had been with him ever since. He saw himself lying on his back under a tall elm tree, waving his arms up and down, soaking himself in the wet grass of Blackstone Park like a bird in the mud.
He was disappointed to find other people in the park when he arrived. A guy and a girl, maybe his age or a little older. He might have seen them around town before, but he didn’t know their names. The guy was standing, his back against the tree, his nose in a book. The girl sat cross-legged a few feet from the tree trunk, holding a small pair of binoculars to her eyes as she looked into the branches above her. They had the same dark brown hair, the girl’s long and straight, the guy’s thick and unkempt. It was odd that they, like him, weren’t in school.
He needed a different place to hide. He had to be alone right now. The thought of--
Too late. He’d been spotted. It was the girl. She had turned his way and was looking at him through her binoculars.
“Hello!” she shouted.
“Hi,” Kevin responded. His voice came out airy and weak.
The girl stood up. She approached, walking with a confidence that made Kevin nervous. What did she want?
“I’m Jackie,” she said. She put her binoculars in her pocket and extended her right hand. Kevin shook it.
“I’m Kevin.”
“Nice to meet you, Kevin. What happened to your face?”
Kevin’s intestines knotted. A gruesome image of how he might look came to mind. He envisioned his too-pale skin turning purple and black under his left eye, his already large nose swollen larger still, his nostrils pushed up and out by a fat upper lip.
“I was in a fight,” he said.
Jackie’s eyebrows sprung up her forehead. “A fight? With whom?”
With whom? Kevin nearly laughed and let out a phony cough to cover himself. Who said with whom other than English teachers?
“I’m fine. It was at school.”
Her eyes drifted past Kevin to the backpack on his shoulders. He felt ridiculous and wished he wasn’t wearing it.
“It was just some guy named Ruben.” Kevin waved his hand, like it was no big deal. It occurred to him that he looked terrible, but to someone who hadn’t seen the fight, he hadn’t necessarily lost. For all this girl knew, Ruben might look even worse.
“You’re going to have a black eye tomorrow if you don’t put some ice on it,” Jackie said.
“I…don’t I have a black eye already?” Kevin asked, mortified at how weak his voice sounded. He cleared his throat.
“No, it’s just swollen.” She stepped closer. Kevin stepped away.
“It’s alright,” she said in a voice one might use when approaching a stray dog. “I just want to look at it.”
“Okay,” Kevin said. This girl, having known him for less than a minute, stepped right into his space. Every cell in his body went on alert. His already queasy stomach contracted. With a casual manner, as if nothing at all was unusual about this encounter, Jackie reached up and touched Kevin’s face, lightly pressing under his eye with two fingers.
“Yes, I think you’ll have a black eye tomorrow,” she said, her voice tickling his cheek with its proximity. Her breath smelled like ginger cookies.
She stepped back once. Kevin stepped back twice. He tried to shrug his shoulders, as if fist-fighting was something he did every day and black eyes were a normal part of his life. Under the weight of his backpack, his shoulder shrug was more of an awkward lurch. He tried to turn that lurch into one fluid movement where he would slide his backpack all the way off, but a corner of his thick biology textbook pressed through the canvas and caught his spine on the way down.
“Ow,” he hissed. The backpack fell to the ground with a thud.
Jackie cringed. “Are you alright?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, fine,” Kevin said. “So what are you guys doing at the park?”
“I’m bird-watching, and my brother Joseph, as you can see, is reading. Hey Joseph! Come over here!”
Joseph was still against the tree, his eyes in his book. “Just a minute!” he shouted back.
“He loves that book,” Jackie said. “We should just go over there, because he won’t move from that spot until he’s finished the last page.”
Leaving his backpack on the ground, Kevin followed her to the middle of the park, toward Joseph and the large elm tree that shaded him.
“Is school out for the day?” she asked.
“No, I’m ditching. It’s fourth period now,” Kevin said.
Jackie smirked. “Ditching?”
“You know…I was just sick of being there today. How come you guys aren’t in school?”
“We homeschool,” said Jackie.
“Oh.”
They walked a few paces.
“So, how does that work?” Kevin asked. “Do your parents teach you?”
“When we were little they did a lot of teaching, but now they mostly leave us to learn whatever we want,” said Jackie. “Sometimes we write reports about what we’re learning, for the government--”
“They have to have their hands in everybody’s business, of course,” said Joseph as he snapped his book shut.
“Uh-oh. Here we go,” said Jackie. “Don’t mind him. Joseph has some strange opinions.”
“You don’t have to say it like I’m a wacko,” Joseph said.
Kevin glanced at the cover of Joseph’s book. The Great Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 7.
“It’s a good book,” Joseph said, “have you read it?”
Kevin shook his head.
“Of course he hasn’t read it, hardly anyone’s read it,” Jackie said.
“Well, more people should. If we all just opened our eyes a little, we’d be amazed at what we saw.”
“Spoken just like your idol,” Jackie said.
“His idol?” asked Kevin.
“Lou Sweeney,” said Jackie. “He was a radio announcer. Joseph’s practically in love with him.”
“He is a radio announcer, not he was, Jackie, and he is more than just a radio announcer. He’s an author, a detective, a voice of reason in troubled--”
A cannon blast of sound ripped the air.
“What the hell was that?” Joseph said.
Kevin shook his head. Jackie stood on her tiptoes, looking toward Turquoise Mountain. The air was silent again. Kevin replayed the sound in his head, trying to recognize it.
“Maybe it was a gas explosion,” said Jackie. “I don’t see anything, though. I hope no one was hurt.”
Joseph let out a yelp and jumped away from the tree.
“What’s with you?” Jackie asked.
“The tree dripped on me,” Joseph said. He moved his hand through his hair. “It isn’t bird poop, is it?”
“I’m sure it’s just water from the rain last night. Let me see.”
Joseph crouched so his sister could look at the top of his head. Just before Joseph bent his knees, Kevin realized that these siblings were the same height.
“Who’s older?” Kevin asked.
“We’re twins,” said Jackie. She ran her hand through Joseph’s hair, rubbed her fingertips together, and declared, “Sap.”
“Gross,” said Joseph. “Is it all sticky?”
“Yes,” said Jackie, now looking up into the tree. “It’s strange, this elm shouldn’t be leaking sap.”
“She makes fun of me for my interests,” said Joseph, “but now let’s see who’s weird. This girl can tell you about every kind of tree in New Mexico, and every bird, every bug, every coyote.”
Jackie ignored her brother. She felt the bark of the tree with her palm, looking up into the branches.
“It’s sick,” Jackie said.
Joseph rolled his eyes. “You sound like a hippie,” he said.
“Feel how dry it is,” said Jackie. “It rained all night. It shouldn’t be this dry.”
Joseph touched the tree.
“Feels fine to me,” he said.
“Well it’s not fine,” said Jackie.
“Maybe it just hasn’t had time to soak up the water,” said Joseph.
“There’s been time,” said Jackie.
Kevin approached the tree as well. He stroked the bark, feeling for dryness.
“Its color isn’t right either,” said Jackie.
“What’s that vibrating?” Kevin asked.
“What vibrating?” said Jackie. She was now engrossed in her study of the tree. Kevin followed her eyes into the branches, and saw a lone butterfly perched near the top.
“That vibration in the tree,” Kevin said. “Do you think it’s from the ground?” He removed his hands and the vibration stopped. He put his hands back on the tree and it started again.
“I don’t feel anything,” said Jackie. She leaned in, touching her ear to the tree. Joseph too pressed his hands more intently against the trunk.
“You’ve got to feel that,” said Kevin. “I can feel the whole tree buzzing.”
“I don’t feel anything,” said Jackie. “Do you feel something Joseph?”
“No,” Joseph said, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Joseph now had both hands, his chest, and his cheek pressed against the tree.
“Maybe it’s the Turquoise Hum,” Joseph said with a smirk on his face. Kevin shot Joseph a dirty look, thinking about everything he’d like to say about ‘The Turquoise Hum,’ but a loud snap from inside the tree interrupted his thoughts.
Joseph and Jackie stepped away from the tree trunk.
Another snapping noise. It sounded like a thunderclap, or the cracking of the world’s largest wishbone. The exact sound was one Kevin had never heard, but was a noise to which his body was preprogrammed to respond. With no conscious effort on his part, his feet began taking him away from the tree.
More cracks. One loud pop after another, separated by squeaking, ripping, snapping, grinding…faster, more urgent cracks became crackling…tearing, slipping…
Kevin scanned the tree from bottom to top. The butterfly had left its perch on the branch above them and drifted in the breeze to the other side of the tree. Like a feather landing on a quiet lake, the butterfly touched down on the branch farthest from Kevin.
And the tree broke.
One loud burst of sound signaled the end, and the base of the trunk was a small explosion of bark and sawdust. There was a silence as it fell. Two seconds of anticipation, then a small earthquake of an impact. A shockwave rippled through the soil. Kevin had to widen his stance to keep from falling.
The fallen tree divided the park in half. There was enough wood on the ground to fill an entire dump truck. A wave of relief came over Kevin. This tree could have fallen in any direction. It happened to fall away from the three teenagers who had been standing underneath it.
A short, jagged stump, no more than two feet tall, remained planted in the earth. A flurry of bugs covered the top of it.
Jackie was the first to approach.
“Termites,” she said.
Kevin and Joseph followed her and leaned in for a look. Kevin had never seen live termites before, but what else could these be? What other bugs lived inside a tree that eventually fell over.
They seemed small and innocent, unaware that their own destructive teeth had caused this calamity. Their primary concern was to find a way out of the sun. In orderly lines they filed into small holes in the wood, disappearing into who knew where.
“I wonder why none of them are going down this one,” Jackie said, pointing at a large hole in the center of the stump. As if in answer to her question, an ooze of thick, clear liquid bubbled up and filled the center hole. As the last termites burrowed their way into the smaller holes on the perimeter, sap continued gurgling from the hole in the center, spilling over the top of the stump, flowing through tiny channels in the wood.
“It smells like cinnamon,” Kevin said. He felt a strange and surprising compulsion to taste it.
Joseph crouched down to sniff.
“It does,” he said. “Is it supposed to smell like cinnamon?”
“It’s not supposed to smell like anything, because it’s not supposed to be here,” Jackie said. “I’ve never heard of an elm making so much sap. It must be related to the termites.”
“What would the termites have to do with it?” Kevin asked.
“It might be a defense,” Jackie said. “I don’t know – nature’s pretty resourceful. Sometimes trees ooze saps and liquids when they’re sick. Maybe it was trying to fill up the holes the termites were making.”
Kevin dipped his finger in the sap and brought it to his mouth.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Jackie said.
But it was too late to stop him. His finger was in his mouth, and the sap was on his tongue. Kevin didn’t know why he wanted to taste the sap so much, but he did, and as it rolled down the back of his throat, it seemed like the most sensible decision he had ever made. What do you do when a termite infested tree falls down? Eat the delicious sap inside, of course!
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Joseph said with a laugh.
“This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted!” Kevin said. He scooped up a bigger glob of sap with his finger and stuffed it in his mouth. It tasted like cinnamon, sugar, milk, and mint, all at once, and in perfect proportion.
Joseph laughed harder now. “You’re a nut! You’re just putting it in your mouth, you don’t even know what it is!”
“Try it,” Kevin said, rolling the sap around with his tongue. The sap was better than just sweet cinnamon and sugar. It was like the coolest drink of water on the hottest summer day, the most sumptuous candy, the most nourishing food, the most healing medicine. He could swear that his whole body was thanking him for this deliciousness.
“It does smell good,” Joseph said. He put a dollip on the tip of his finger and brought it to his lips.
“You’re not kidding!” Joseph rushed to put his hand back in the sap and get a bigger scoop. “Jackie, you have to try this!”
Kevin felt like his mind was growing sharp, like his body was awakening from a deep, restful nap.
“It’s like a drug,” Kevin said as he dipped his finger in for more.
“Like a drug?” said Jackie. “You guys are scaring me.”
“Quit worrying and try it already,” said Joseph. He stuffed his copy of The Great Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 7 into his back pocket, freeing both hands to dig into the sap, which continued oozing out of the hole.
“I think I’ll pass,” Jackie said.
A picture came to Kevin’s mind that was so clear and so filled with joy that he acted it out. The picture was of him playfully putting a drop of sap on Jackie’s lips with the same self-assurance she possessed when she inspected his injured eye. Without thinking, he made it happen, dipping his finger back into the sweet liquid and smearing it on Jackie’s lips before she could turn away.
“Hey!” she said with a start, but her face went deadly serious. “Oh…you weren’t…that’s amazing,” she said.
“I told you!” Joseph shouted, and gestured at the tree stump, inviting Jackie to have more.
She obliged, and for a few glorious minutes, the three of them licked up every drop of sap the tree stump gave them. They took turns, each as eager as the others, but all content to share.
“It’s like liquid happiness,” Joseph said.
“If we could bottle this and sell it, we’d be millionaires,” said Kevin.
“When I get home, I’m finding out what this is,” said Jackie. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this before. Surely we’re not the first to discover it.”
“Who knows? Maybe we are,” said Kevin. He felt like the world might be full of surprises he’d never considered before. Maybe there was delicious sap or something like it inside every tree, if one only knew where to look.
Joseph scraped the inside of the hole with his finger. “I wonder where the termites went.”
“They might have a nest under this tree,” said Jackie. “I definitely want to research further, and maybe come back when I know more about what to look for.”
“Bugs and trees and a quiet afternoon in the park – this is like your dream come true, isn’t it?” said Joseph.
“Pretty much,” Jackie said with a big smile. “Look Kevin, you’ve got a friend!”
“I know,” Kevin said. He turned his head to look at the butterfly perched on his shoulder.
“I think this is the same one that was in the tree earlier,” he said. Something about the way the sun reflected off the butterfly’s back, its regal stance on his shirt…Still in a spell of happiness, Kevin allowed himself to become mesmerized in the butterfly’s orange and black wings. Warmth radiated from his stomach through his body, and he felt himself growing calm as he looked at this peaceful butterfly.
Even though he felt a quiet inside him, the world around Kevin was a symphony of sounds. He could hear Joseph’s breathing, Jackie’s heartbeat. A robin chirped from a nearby tree. The sap had made him so high, so alert, that his ears were doing things they had never done before. They were finding the clicks and rattles of beetles from the far corners of the park. They were relaying information, if not sound in the normal sense, from the air, the ground, even the tree stump. They were picking up some quiet and beautiful sound of the butterfly, a tiny flute on his shoulder.
With two flaps of its wings, the butterfly took off. As the butterfly flew away, the peaceful bubble that had been Kevin’s world began to stretch. There was a strain on imaginary walls. For some reason, Kevin didn’t want the butterfly to leave. There was so much peace in that butterfly.
“We should follow it,” Kevin said.
The butterfly bounced through the air, drifting away from them.
“Yes,” said Jackie. “We should.”
Chapter 2
Turquoise, New Mexico is named after a mountain that overlooks the city. The people of Turquoise have a complicated relationship with their mountain. Some believe you aren’t truly a citizen of Turquoise unless you regularly hike the mountain. Others believe the mountain wishes to be left alone, that it’s rude to get too close. Turquoise Mountain is so named because its peak turns a blue-green color when it reflects the afternoon sky, leading early settlers to believe the mountaintop was covered in valuable turquoise gemstone. Many residents still think the mountain is loaded with the blue-green rock, even though no evidence of a turquoise deposit has ever been found there.
In the 1980’s, Wideband Communications Company built the world’s highest radio tower on top of Turquoise Mountain. They claimed the mountain was the perfect place to broadcast microwave signals to and from satellites orbiting the earth. The people of Turquoise called the tower “The Dunce Cap” in reference to its inverted cone shape, and demanded that it be removed. To protect the tower, Wideband Communications made a deal with the city council to share the lucrative revenue generated by The Dunce Cap. The deal divided Turquoise in two: those who favored the tower and the money it generated, and those who thought it an eyesore not worthy of their mountain for any price.
The money won and the tower stayed, but over the years it became the subject of even greater controversy. Many people came to believe The Dunce Cap was the source of The Turquoise Hum.
For Kevin, Turquoise Mountain, The Dunce Cap, and the controversy of it all loomed large. Turquoise Mountain was central in the life of his dad and the death of his mom. After his mom died, Kevin and his dad made a trip to Turquoise Mountain. Neither had been back since.
As Kevin, Jackie, and Joseph chased a butterfly through the back streets of town, as they scaled wooden coyote fences, trespassed on other people’s property, ran through back alleys and across dirt roads, Kevin realized that this chase might well end at the mountain. He also noticed a strange ringing in his ears.
Both observations made him uncomfortable, and he tried to put them out of his mind.
The butterfly bounced just above Kevin’s head, always a few feet in front of him. Joseph and Jackie ran on either side. It flew much faster than Kevin would have expected, but, then again, he had never chased a butterfly before.
It led them across Eastern Avenue, past the old mission church which marked the edge of town, and into open space, where it increased its speed.
“You guys, look how fast we’re running!” Jackie yelled.
Kevin looked at the ground underneath his spinning feet. Tall grass, sagebrush, and rabbit-holes flew past, almost like he was looking out the window of a moving car. And even after a few minutes of crazy fast running, Kevin felt good, like he could run a marathon if he had to.
He turned to look behind him. In barely a minute, they had run so far that the old mission chapel was small in the distance. A few hundred yards to their right was State Road 150. A lone car, a black Neptune with dark tinted windows, drove in the same direction they ran. From the distance, it appeared the car was going no faster than they were.
The butterfly led them on a diagonal away from the highway. Kevin wondered if they’d be able to find their way home. He took another look back. Joseph and Jackie both had their eyes glued on the butterfly. Jackie was smiling.
In the midst of a full-on sprint, Jackie had a grin on her face that made Kevin feel good. Her grin made him wonder if this would be a moment they would remember when they were old. Having never spoken before today, the three of them had witnessed the toppling of a giant elm tree, had eaten the sap inside, and now…
Now they were following a butterfly out of town?
It was strange, but it felt right. And it wouldn’t have happened if Kevin was still in school. This adventure had started when Ruben beat him up.
That’s why we have to keep going, Kevin told himself. The day had started out terribly, and now he was making it into something good. The past year of his life had been unspeakably miserable, but maybe now it was turning around. He was supposed to be in school, he would probably be in trouble tomorrow for this little adventure, but Jackie was smiling. He and his new friends were doing something spontaneous that just felt right, and any adult who wanted to yell at him about it later could go to hell for all he cared.
It was difficult for Kevin to latch onto the reality of what was happening. Were they really running this fast? Did he really feel this good? His level of awareness was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Even as the landscape flew past, Kevin could pick out any rock, any pebble, and view it with high definition clarity in the quarter second before it was gone from his field of view. And his ears – what was going on with his ears? The odd sensation he had experienced at Blackstone Park, the sense that all the sounds around him somehow melded into a beautiful, sensible music, remained.
Kevin turned his focus back to the butterfly. It approached a long chain-link fence with a roll of barbed wire along the top. This was meant to be the end of the road. The butterfly would cross over this fence and they would lose it. But an outrageous thought grew in Kevin’s mind as the fence came closer.
Jump.
There wasn’t time to think about it. He would either have to stop cold or do it. Ten more steps, five more, two more…
Kevin’s feet sprung from the ground and he soared with ease. He tucked his legs underneath him, and cleared the fence like an Olympic hurdler. He landed gracefully on the other side.
“Did you guys see what I just did?” Kevin called back.
“Woohoo!” Joseph shouted, right behind him. Joseph was so high in the air he briefly blocked the sun from Kevin’s eyes. He soared over Kevin’s head and landed on his feet, a stone’s throw or more from Kevin’s landing point.
Jackie was next. Watching her jump from start to finish, several seconds in the air, clearing the fence, Kevin allowed himself to realize just how abnormal this was.
“What’s happened to us?” Jackie said, her face a burst of excitement.
“The butterfly’s getting away!” Joseph yelled. He took the lead, and they followed, leaving their questions for another time.
In the open field at full speed, it was clear where they were going. The butterfly was taking them to Turquoise Mountain.
The flat desert gave way to a slow, steady hill, with a few trees speckling the open terrain. Wildflower blossoms and juniper berries began scenting the air. Open grassland became sparse orchard became mountain forest. The butterfly danced between the branches of aspens and pines as they wove through the tree trunks below. Sunlight and shadow flickered in Kevin’s eyes as he ran. His thoughts drifted into the past for an instant, and although his eyes stayed on the butterfly, his mind didn’t, and he lost it.
“Where did it go?” Joseph said. The edge of panic in Joseph’s voice brought Kevin back to the present. After an exuberant chase that took them to the base of Turquoise Mountain, the butterfly was gone.
His ears were ringing. He had denied it the entire way, but it was happening. A low, resonant noise, rich and deep -- it seemed to vibrate his skull.
“Do you guys hear something?” Kevin asked.
Joseph threw Kevin a look of confusion that answered his question.
Kevin covered his ears. No change. He bent down. No change. Leaning over, his eyes caught something sparkling on the ground.
A shiny rock, half-buried amidst fallen pine cones. Kevin took two careful, quiet steps, each one feeling loud and deliberate after miles of running. Kevin felt like he had been to this exact spot on the mountain before.
A few paces behind the shiny rock lay a steep downward slope, one wall of a natural ditch cut into the mountainside by a small creek. Kevin knew the creek by the sound of its flow. A memory crawled forward in his mind: cool mountain water, splashed on his cheeks, washing away tears.
He reached into the jumble of pine cones and twigs and retrieved the shiny rock. The size of a baseball, clear and finely cut, it wasn’t the sort of rock one just finds out in the forest.
Kevin picked it up.
“What is that?” Joseph asked.
“It looks like a crystal,” Jackie said.
Kevin shuttered. Crystal was a dirty word in his mind, closely intertwined with the hum and years of resentment.
The crystal broke the midday sunlight into a prism of color. Something familiar about the sounds and scenery set off a tickle in the back of Kevin’s throat.
“Are you alright?” Joseph said.
It took Kevin a second before he realized Joseph was talking to him.
“Kevin?” Jackie said. “Kevin, are you crying?”
The breeze was cool on Kevin’s cheeks. They were wet.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve just got some memories of this place.”
“There it is!” Joseph shouted, pointing at the butterfly. It was ten feet ahead of them, bounding downward into the ditch. It took up a path directly above the creek.
“Do you want to stop, Kevin?” Jackie asked. “You seem like you’re not having fun anymore.”
“Oh no, we have to keep going now,” Kevin said. “I’ll explain later.”
Kevin put the crystal in his pocket and they took off after Joseph, skipping down the dirt wall of the ditch and into the creek below.
The current was stronger than Kevin remembered. A cool sheen of water, flowing over a bed of rocks, it was deep enough to cover his sneakers as he ran. Everything about this place was familiar now. Just a few more yards into a hidden valley, walls of spruce would rise up around the stream, they would round a bend….
Kevin knew the emotions on the other side of that bend would be overwhelming. He didn’t expect them to knock him off his feet. Everything he remembered was intact, but there was a new addition of such beauty that Kevin could hardly stand it. So he stopped. He planted himself in the middle of a moving stream and fell awkwardly to his knees and then onto his hip, submerging himself from the waist down.
Jackie came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
In front of them, rooted on the ground at the edge of the stream, was a fully grown cottonwood tree. Behind the tree stood a granite face of the mountain, a shear wall rising more than a hundred feet from the earth. The last time Kevin was here, he had decided it was the prettiest place on Earth. It was even more stunning now.
The last time, the cottonwood was a majestic green, its leaves forming a shiny, vibrant tent. Now its leaves were hidden, as were its branches and trunk, buried underneath a spectacular sight. From the exposed roots on the ground to the top of the highest branch, the entire tree was covered with thousands upon thousands of bright orange butterflies.
“What is this place?” Joseph said.
“It’s my mom’s place,” Kevin said. “It’s where we came when she died. We spread her ashes on the roots of this tree.”
Chapter 3
“Benjamin, I want to tell you something, and I need you to put aside your feelings on the subject for a minute.”
Kevin’s mom had returned from her daily hike. It was a summer evening. Kevin was watching basketball on TV. Normally, a conversation between his parents in the middle of a basketball game would have been annoying, but this was different. I need you to put aside your feelings on the subject for a minute. His mom was about to open a topic that had been closed for years.
“Of course,” said his dad, “if it’s important to you.”
“It is. Today, while I was hiking, I found a place. A wonderful place.”
Kevin turned down the volume on the television.
“You should hear this too, Kev,” said his mom. “I was following a butterfly. I lost track of it, but I did find a gorgeous mountain river. I followed it. It took me to a pristine valley, there was a cottonwood tree standing alone on the riverbank. It’s the only cottonwood I’ve ever seen on the mountain. It was the most stunning, lovely place I’ve ever been, and…I don’t know why it feels so important, but it does – when I die--”
“What is this?” said Kevin’s dad. “When you die?”
“Just hear me out, okay? It’s important to me. When I die, I want my ashes spread on the roots of that tree. I’ve drawn you a map.”
She pulled a folded paper from her back pocket.
“You want us to take your…you want us…” Kevin’s dad closed his eyes in concentration. “Out of the blue, today you’ve decided that when you die, you want your remains taken to Turquoise Mountain?”
“Yes, and not out of the blue,” said Kevin’s mom, pushing the paper into her husband’s hands. “This place is special. I know this isn’t easy for you to think about.”
“No, if it’s important--”
“It is.”
“Write it down in the will,” said Kevin’s dad, handing the folded paper to Kevin. “Lord knows you’ll outlive me.”
A year later, Kevin and his dad were following his mom’s handwritten notes. Take State Road 150 as far as it goes. Park in the open lot at the end of the road. Walk north into the foothills. Find the Park Service sign.
They found the river and followed it into the hidden valley. They spread her ashes on the roots of the cottonwood tree. When they got home, Kevin’s dad went into the bedroom and didn’t come out until the next morning.
Kevin knew his dad would never go back to the mountain after that trip. For Benjamin Browne, Turquoise Mountain was a difficult place even before the death of his wife. To him, Turquoise Mountain was forever tied to “The Hum.”
The Hum. The Hearers. The flowing stream, the chirping birds, the buzzing insects, the music in his ears. It was the flute of that one butterfly, played a thousand times over, but blended together in a peaceful way. Sitting in a stream, looking upon his mom’s place, for a fraction of a second, Kevin allowed an unallowable question: Could I be hearing The Hum?
He shook his head back and forth, trying to throw the thought from his brain.
“What is it, Kevin?” asked Jackie.
“Nothing.” He stood up. “I just have lots of emotions tied to this place.”
“I bet you do. How old were you were when she died.”
“It was just last year.”
“I’m so sorry. That must have been hard. I can’t even imagine.”
Kevin, Joseph, and Jackie were quiet for a time that might have been a minute or an hour. The butterflies took off. They flew up the shear wall and over the mountain, turning the sky orange with their flight.
“We can go,” said Kevin. “Thanks for waiting here with me.”
Kevin led them up a narrow trail that took them out of the valley. He removed the crystal from his pocket as they hiked, and they passed it among the three of them.
“I’ve heard that the mountain is full of turquoise,” said Joseph. “This is definitely not turquoise.”
“Those are just superstitions and misinformation,” said Jackie. “There’s no turquoise in Turquoise Mountain.”
“Don’t the Hearers think that crystals--”
“Check out these tracks,” Jackie said. Kevin was thankful for her interruption. Joseph was about to take the conversation in a direction Kevin didn’t want it to go. Jackie pointed at a line of animal prints in the mud. She made the group stop for a closer look.
“They’re not like any other tracks I’ve seen,” she said.
Kevin bent over to look at the deep, oval dents in the mud.
“What’s up here?” said Kevin. “Elk?”
“They’re not elk prints,” said Jackie. “Look how far apart they’re spaced. Whatever made these was too big to be an elk.”
“Too big to be an elk?” said Kevin. He wondered what lived in the mountains that was bigger than an elk.
“I want to follow them,” said Jackie.
“Of course you do,” said Joseph. “In case you haven’t noticed, Kevin, my sister’s a sucker for nature.”
Jackie ignored the comment and began following the animal tracks up the mountainside. Kevin and Joseph went after her.
“Do you guys smell smoke?” Kevin asked.
The fresh scents of wildflower and spruce that had welcomed them as they came up the mountain was now masked with the smell of smoke, and under the smoke was a pungent fume like rubbing alcohol. Kevin had the strange thought that if he needed to, he could close his eyes and follow his nose, like a bloodhound.
“People have been up here recently,” said Jackie. “These aren’t natural smells.”
The tracks led them up and around the mountain, the fumes growing stronger with every step. They were turning inward, towards the back side of the mountain and away from the city. Pebbles began to overtake the grass, then rocks, then small boulders. They came to a clearing and found a hole on the mountainside big enough to swallow a car. It was a dark, open cave surrounded by a wide mound of fallen rock. A sheen of dust floated in the air.
Jackie kicked at the pebbles with her shoe. “These rocks cover the animal trail,” she saidl
The fiery fumes were potent now. It smelled like a gas station.
A step. A slip. The sound of rocks cracking together echoed from inside the cave.
“Someone’s in there,” Kevin said.
“Maybe it’s Jackie’s animal,” said Joseph.
“I don’t think so,” said Jackie. “These fumes would drive it away. Maybe we should go.”
“You know what this is?” said Joseph. “That explosion we heard at the park. I bet this is it!”
“But where is everybody?” said Jackie. “And what is that smell?”
These were great questions. Not only were there no people around, there were no fences, no cars, there wasn’t even any caution tape.
“Maybe they’re inside,” Joseph said, nodding his head in the direction of the open hole. “I bet this all has something to do with the diamond in Kevin’s pocket.”
“Diamond?” Kevin said. “You think it’s a diamond?”
“Could be,” said Joseph. “What if, for all this time, when everyone thought there was turquoise in the mountain, there actually was a diamond mine, and now some secret mining guild came and blasted open the mountain to get the diamonds out.”
“It rained all night,” Jackie said. “Those tracks would have been washed away. Whatever made them was here today. It’s so strange.”
“Do you guys hear someone coming?” Kevin asked.
“Miners are probably deep in there pulling out the diamonds as we speak,” said Joseph.
“Why would an animal come here, if not to go in the cave?” Jackie said.
“The cave was just formed,” Joseph said. “The mining company. The explosion.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Jackie said.
“Hush you two,” Kevin said. “I think someone’s coming.”
Kevin’s ears had found a car off-roading up the mountainside. Kevin had a clear picture in his mind of how far away it was, just from the sound of it.
“Oh my God, Kevin. Your face!” Jackie said.
“What? What’s wrong with my face?”
“Nothing! Your black eye, your swollen lip, they’re totally healed!”
Totally healed? In all the excitement, Kevin had nearly forgotten that this adventure began on the losing end of a fight. He touched his lip. The tenderness and swelling were gone. He touched under his eye and didn’t feel even a sliver of pain.
“Weird,” Kevin whispered.
The car came to a stop. Doors opened. People stepped out.
“Someone’s up there,” said a man’s voice. Some effect of the mountain, some echo off the rock, carried the man’s voice clearly into Kevin’s ears. Even though the man was out of sight, he sounded like he was two steps away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Joseph said.
They turned and went back down the mountainside.
“Hey, wait right there!” came a shout from below.
Two men emerged from the treeline. Kevin stopped to get a look at them. They were wearing uniforms, like park rangers, or cops.
“Stop! Police!” shouted one of the men.
“Keep going!” Joseph hissed.
Kevin took off in a full sprint down the mountain.
“Stop! Stop, I said!”
The men were racing in a diagonal up the mountain. Joseph and Jackie were already too far ahead, so the men cut their path straight to Kevin. Compared to Joseph and Jackie, the men looked like they were moving in slow motion.
“Damn, those kids are fast,” he heard one of the men say as Kevin zipped past them both and into the cover of the trees below.
Trees, rocks, and shrubs whisked behind them as they ran. Kevin saw Jackie leap over a boulder, and Joseph shimmy across a fallen branch with the same agility and ease they possessed on the run up to the mountain. He remembered their earlier leap over a tall, barbed wire fence, and he laughed. The whole afternoon was leaving the boring realm of reality and entering the fun world of dreams. A few hours ago, Kevin was a freshman at Turquoise High School on the losing end of a fight. Now he ran into the open grassland beneath Turquoise Mountain, chasing his new friends, breaking all the rules that were supposed to apply to him, and laughing.
Fire Ants
From A Treasury of Insects by Tristan Nelson III
Fire ants in the American South display a strange quirk of nature. Take an animal, or a plant, that has evolved to live in one location, move it to another, and it will usually die. Penguins are ill-equipped to survive in the Sahara. A Canadian pine could not live in the tropics. Drop a man in the middle of the ocean and he will eventually drown.
But sometimes nature flips the coin. Sometimes an animal that might have many natural enemies at home will thrive beyond reason if moved to a location where those enemies don’t exist.
So it was with the Brazilian Fire Ant, whose ancestors were targeted by giant anteaters, parasitic maggots, viral fungus organisms, and a thousand other insects in the hyper-competitive world of the rain forest. To survive in Brazil, the fire ant developed a powerful poison sting and an aggressive attitude.
Fire ants arrived in the United States in the 1930’s, when a boat traveling from Brazil to the coast of Alabama foolishly used hundreds of pounds of Brazilian sand as ballast. Of course there were fire ants in that sand, and of course they crawled into the many packages of food being delivered to Alabama.
Without their many rain forest enemies to hold them in check, the fire ants flourished. In only a few years, their large mounds came to dominate the landscapes of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. Fire ants ruin crops, attack livestock, and occasionally have run-ins with people, with horrifying results.
The world of global trade has helped the fire ant further spread its empire. Cargo ships, the same that transported the ant from Brazil to Alabama, have already taken the ant to China, Australia, and the Philippines. Governments have spent millions trying to slow the spread, with no success. The fire ant can survive wet or dry conditions, in extremes of heat or cold. It is only a matter of time before the fire ant takes its place among nature’s greatest conquerors, moving wherever it likes, doing whatever it wishes, paying little mind to the human pests who want to share the fire ant’s space on this earth.
Chapter 4
Jackie and Joseph lived on the outside of town in one of the homes Kevin’s dad called a “McMansion.”
“Disgusting,” his dad would mutter every time they drove past the housing developments on the outskirts of Turquoise. Kevin had learned this opinion wasn’t his dad’s alone. It was the preferred topic of conversation whenever company was at Kevin’s house. Over steaming cups of espresso, Kevin’s dad and his weird friends kept close track of the biggest houses in town. They knew which mansions belonged to Hollywood celebrities, which belonged to Las Vegas casino kings, and which were retreats for Texas oil barons. Not caring much either way, Kevin had always assumed his dad was right, that these houses, and the rich people who lived in them, must be “disgusting.”
Standing inside Jackie and Joseph’s living room, Kevin was angry that his dad was so quick to judge. The big shade trees in the front and back were examples of what Kevin’s dad called “phony non-native landscaping,” but they were pretty, and probably went hand-in-hand with Jackie’s love of nature. A basketball hoop mounted over the garage was the sort of fun touch Kevin wished were present at his house. Inside the living room, there were high ceilings, skylights, a red-brick floor, and in the center of the room, surrounded by tall potted plants, stood a cast iron sculpture Kevin recognized.
“My dad made this,” he said, touching the arm of Woman Throwing A Spear.
Jackie took a minute to register. “Benjamin Browne is your father? How cool! Your dad is very talented. My mom loves this sculpture.”
“I was in fifth grade when he made this one. It was one of my favorites.”
Kevin thought about his dad’s current project, a series of ceramic bowls he called “Contained.” Kevin missed the days when his dad made sculptures of people and animals.
Across the living room, into the open kitchen, Kevin saw more evidence that his dad had misjudged the people in these homes. Standing on the kitchen counter, underneath the cabinets, was one of his dad’s beloved Tingley 2000 Home Barista Espresso machines.
“These machines might change the world,” Kevin’s dad had once said of his own Tingley machine. “They make espresso at home as easy as coffee or tea. Now that people can be lazy about it, they’ll start making their own espresso, and that will bring the whole world one step closer to good taste.”
Funding the arts and drinking espresso would make this family popular with Kevin’s dad; their apparent reading habit would have appealed to Kevin’s mom. The entire side wall of the living room in Joseph and Jackie’s house was one giant bookshelf, complete with a library-style sliding ladder. Joseph took The Great Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 7 out of his back pocket, brushed the dirt off the cover, slid the ladder to one side, climbed up half way, and re-shelved the book. It fit perfectly between Volume 6 and Volume 8 of the same series. On the opposite side of Volume 8 was a thick hardcover book titled The Transcripts of Lou Sweeney. Next to it were A History of The Lou Sweeney Radio Show and Unafraid of the Truth: An Autobiography of Lou Sweeney.
“Wow, Jackie wasn’t kidding,” Kevin said. “You really like this Lou Sweeney guy.”
“The truth, wherever it takes us,” Joseph said with a grin. “That’s his motto.”
“He’d probably be interested in what happened to us today,” Jackie said.
Joseph’s eyes opened wide. “You’re right! I should post something on the fan site.”
“Hello, Dorkbrain? Kidding,” said Jackie. Joseph furrowed his brow, as if this topic were nothing to kid about.
Kevin looked over the rest of the bookshelf. Someone in the house liked to read classic literature. Someone else liked to read books on science. One shelf was devoted to books on math, another looked like it was all history. But more than half of this bookshelf belonged to Joseph. Unsolved mysteries, conspiracies, missing persons, government cover-ups, aliens in the desert—
A book caught Kevin’s eye and screamed for his attention. Safe Cracking For Fun and Profit. He pulled it from the shelf.
“You’re into safe-cracking?” asked Joseph.
“No,” said Kevin, “well, it’s interesting to me, that’s all.”
Kevin opened the book and looked at the first page.
Safe Cracking For Fun and Profit by “Sticky Fingers” Smith. Chapter 1: The Allure of the Locked Door.
Human beings are curious creatures. Curious to a fault. Even the most mundane of objects becomes exotic when it is purposely hidden from view.
“To be honest, I found the book pretty useless,” said Joseph. "I followed the instructions to the letter, and have never cracked open a safe.”
“That’s too bad,” Kevin said. He put the book back on the shelf.
“I don’t think it’s too bad,” said Jackie. “Sticky Fingers is probably in jail somewhere right now. No one needs to be breaking into someone else’s safe. Unless you’re a crook, you know the combination or you call the locksmith.”
Kevin opened his mouth to speak his strong opinion on this subject, but was interrupted when the front door opened, and a tall, skinny man stepped inside. The man wore a dirty blue uniform with a white oval patch over the breast pocket. The patch said “Liberty Pest Control.”
“Hello, Tom,” said Jackie. “You can just leave the bill on the table.”
The man nodded at Jackie in acknowledgement and put a piece of paper on the end table.
“Tom, this is Kevin Browne,” Jackie said. The tall man stepped into the room and nodded.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Browne,” Tom said, in a slow, Southern accent that wasn’t at all from Turquoise. “If it’s alright with you, I won’t shake your hand, seein’ as how I’ve just been bug sprayin’ out back.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Kevin said, his eyes drifting to the Liberty Pest Control logo on Tom’s shirt. Kevin, like everyone in town, remembered the great rat infestation of downtown Turquoise, now a few years in the past. Seemingly out of nowhere, a horrible rat problem developed in the office buildings downtown. The city called on Liberty Pest Control to get rid of the rodents. For six months, a large portion of downtown was fenced off and covered with black tarps, the Liberty Pest Control logo affixed to every fence. The news reported that pest control specialists were seeking out the master nest in the sewers. One day the fences and tarps disappeared and the rat problem was over. Kevin hadn’t seen the Liberty Pest Control logo since.
“Well, have a good--” Tom stopped himself. An odd look came over his face, like he’d just eaten something sour. Tom reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a clear, plastic box. He took three giant steps across the living room and swung his arm down to the floor, slamming the box into the ground. He trapped an ant, which frantically ran up the box’s sides.
Tom slid the box along the floor, and in one smooth motion, tilted it up and snapped a lid on the open end.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” said Tom. “Don’t know how an ant got in here.”
“That’s okay, Tom,” said Jackie.
“A fire ant, even,” said Tom. “Very interesting. Well then, I’ll just leave the bill on the table.”
Tom went through the front door and closed it behind him.
“Our parents are weird,” said Jackie. “My dad saw a black widow in the garage right after we moved here, and now pest control comes once a week. I’ve told my dad we need to cancel the contract and learn to live with the spiders, but he won’t do it.”
“When do your parents come home?” Kevin asked.
“Dad will be home around 6:00. Mom just left to run some errands, she’ll be back soon,” Jackie said.
Kevin looked at the clock over the fireplace. 2:30. At school, the day was nearly over.
His fight with Ruben seemed so distant now. Just a few hours in his past, but in his memory, it might as well have been another life.
“Where can I find a mirror?”
“This way,” said Jackie. She led Kevin down the hall, to a bathroom with tiled countertops and a storage pantry built into the back wall. Kevin flipped on the light, and found his face just as Jackie had described it, completely unblemished. His skin was soft, his cheeks were the right color, nothing was swollen, nothing was damaged. His complicated plan for the evening: dumpsters, Kung Pao Chicken, avoiding his dad – it was all unnecessary now. The only evidence left of a morning gone wrong was the stain on his shirt, which was easily explained with any one of a thousand believable stories.
“You’re sure I didn’t look like this when we met at the park?”
“Yes,” said Jackie. “This morning you looked like you’d just stepped out from a war. This whole half of your face was puffy and bruised.”
Jackie gently prodded the skin underneath Kevin’s eye, exactly as she had done at the park. This time it didn’t hurt at all.
“Do you always heal this quickly?” Jackie asked.
“No. At least, I don’t think so,” said Kevin, realizing he had no prior experience with black eyes before today.
“It was the sap,” said Joseph. He popped his head through the door. “Don’t you think?”
“That’s my guess too,” said Jackie. “I want to go research it. But I also don’t want to sit down, you know?”
She did a little shuffle from one foot to the other.
“I’m feeling antsy too,” said Joseph. “I think we’re hopped up on adrenaline and whatever else is flowing in our blood since we ate that sap.”
Kevin leaned in closer to the mirror to get a better look at his face. He pulled at the skin under his left eye, where Ruben’s fist had connected in a knockout blow. Not even the slightest scratch or discoloration. He leaned in closer still, wondering why it seemed like he couldn’t get a better angle of sight on his reflection.
“I guess it could be adrenaline,” Jackie said. “But I feel like it’s more than that. I feel like something inside me wants to jump out and grab hold of something.”
“Let me see that diamond you found,” Joseph said to Kevin.
Kevin pulled the crystal from his pocket. “I don’t think it’s a diamond,” he said.
“There’s a way we can find out,” Joseph said. He opened his hand, revealing a silver tube in his palm.
“What’s that?” Kevin asked.
“An ultraviolet light pen,” Joseph said. “I just stole it from Jackie’s room.”
“Good thinking,” Jackie said. “We can test it.”
“Test it for what?” Kevin said.
“Watch,” said Jackie. She turned off the bathroom light.
Joseph took the crystal from Kevin and held the silver tube against the crystal’s widest face. He pressed a button on the tube, turning on the ultraviolet light.
“What in the world?” said Kevin.
The crystal was glowing bright purple, so bright that it lit up the entire bathroom.
“Is it supposed to do this?” asked Joseph.
“It’s supposed to fluoresce,” said Jackie. “Trace minerals inside are supposed to glow, but it’s not supposed to do this.”
“What does it mean?” Kevin asked.
“Either it’s not a diamond, or it’s the most valuable diamond on earth,” said Jackie.
“If we could find more of these, we’d be rich,” said Joseph. “Imagine if light bulbs were made out of this stone. Everyone’s energy bill would plummet.”
“It would cost a lot more than a household energy bill to make every light bulb out of diamonds, or even crystals,” said Jackie.
“Well I’m sure there’s some money-making application for this,” said Joseph. “I guarantee you this is why someone blasted open the mountain. There are more of these inside.”
They oohed and aahed over the crystal for awhile, each taking turns investigating the power of its glow. When she’d seen enough, Jackie turned on the light. The crystal made its way back to Kevin and he put it in his pocket. He returned to the mirror to further investigate the miracle healing on his face.
“Is there something strange about this mirror?” Kevin asked.
“What do you mean?” said Joseph.
“It’s like, no matter how close I get to it, I can’t get a better view.”
“Let me see.” Joseph stepped next to Kevin and the two of them leaned in and out, watching their own reflections grow larger and smaller.
“Weird,” Joseph said.
“Weird is right,” said Jackie. “I wish you two could see yourselves.”
“We’re weird? You’re the one who wants to jump out of your skin and grab something,” Joseph said.
“It’s not that it’s a bad view,” said Kevin. “It’s just strange.”
“Hang on,” Joseph said, “I don’t think it’s the mirror. I think--”
Joseph grabbed a hair brush from the bathroom counter and held it close to his eyes.
“You guys don’t feel it?” said Jackie.
“Feel what?” said Kevin.
“Like something inside of you really wants to come out.”
“I don’t,” said Kevin, now watching Joseph wave the brush forward and back in front of his face.
“It’s us!” Joseph shouted. “It’s our eyes! Kevin, the mirror is fine. Our eyesight is so sharp that when you look in the mirror, you can see just as much detail from far away as you can when you get in close.”
Kevin looked in the mirror again, focusing on the skin just underneath his left eye. He focused carefully. Even though his face was more than a foot away from the mirror, he could see all the pores in the skin -- he could see inside the pores. Focusing his eyes, he could see a tiny speck of dirt, hidden at the base of a tiny hair follicle, half folded in a wrinkle under his eye.
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