Meeting Read online

  Peter waited through the last ten minutes of Maya’s hour of piano practice, even though she was playing the same piece, the Bach Bourrée in E Minor, over and over. It was a tune she had learned the year before, but she liked it better than most of the songs in the new book Ms. Barge had made her buy. While she played it, she could think about things.

  When she looked up at the clock and it ticked over to six P.M., she heaved a sigh and closed the cover over the keyboard, then looked sideways at Peter.

  “Halloween,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I go out with you? I don’t think Mom and Dad will let me go by myself.”

  “What are you going to dress as? If you’re going to be a zombie dripping rotten meat, I don’t want you around.”

  “That wasn’t even me! That was my friend Alex!”

  Maya laughed. “I know. What are you going as this year?”

  “A fox. Mom helped me put it together.”

  “Sure. You can come with us.”

  “Us?” He looked uncertain.

  “My plans aren’t firm,” she said, “but I invited Benjamin and Gwenda. They’ve never trick-or-treated before. And I asked this girl from school named Helen, but she didn’t say yes yet. There’s this other girl I might have to ask just because she’s lonely.” If she invited Sibyl, that would cause all kinds of problems, Maya realized, but . . . “And”—Maya glanced around the living room, then leaned close—“Rimi’s coming,” she whispered.

  “Yaaay!”

  “I mean, she couldn’t not come, but we’re going to try to make her my costume.”

  “Yaaay! But how the heck could that work?”

  “We don’t know yet. I’m going to have to get some alone time to figure it out.”

  “Oh, boy!” Peter stood up. “Thanks, Maya,” he said, and raced off.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Thanks to Rimi’s alarm abilities, Maya actually got to school early Friday morning, before the Janus House kids. She was sitting on a swing in the playground watching cars pull in and drop off kids when Helen sat on the swing next to her. “I’ll go trick-or-treating with you, if it’s okay if some of my other friends come,” Helen said.

  “My little brother’s coming, and maybe Benjamin and Gwenda,” Maya said.

  “Benjamin and Gwenda? I’ve never heard of them doing anything on Halloween! This I have to see.”

  “What’s the best neighborhood for candy?”

  “Where do you live?” Helen asked.

  “Thirty-third, off Passage Street. Next door to Janus House.”

  “Right near here. Well, your neighborhood is about the best we have, aside from Janus House, which never gives out anything. You’d think it would be a perfect place to get stuff, with so many apartments in one spot, but they turn off the lights and lock the doors. Nobody’s ever gotten a thing out of them. People talk about tricking them, but somehow it never happens.”

  “Would you like to start at my house?” asked Maya. “I don’t know where you live.”

  “Twenty-eight Twelve Slip Street. About five blocks from you. I’m going with Janine and Tovah and Sibyl. You guys meet us at my house at about six, okay? We’ll head back to your house. I know the best houses on the way.”

  “All right. I’m pretty sure that’ll be okay. Could I get your phone number in case there’s a change in plans?”

  They got out cell phones and programmed each other’s numbers into them.

  “Hey,” Travis said as people settled into their homeroom desks, “these two Janus House girls, Alira and Jemmy, came over yesterday afternoon and asked me how to take care of Oma.”

  “Wow,” said Maya. “How’d it go?”

  “They were great. Oma liked them. And they were stronger than I am, and they were all, like, we so want to help you! to Oma, and they said—”

  “What?” Maya asked as Benjamin sat on her other side, with Gwenda settling beyond him.

  “They said they’d come over on Halloween so I could go out if I wanted to.”

  “Wow!”

  “So, like, do I want to?”

  Maya cocked her head. Why is he asking me?

  Tell him he wants to, Rimi thought.

  “You want to,” Maya said. She turned toward Benjamin. “You guys are coming, too, right?”

  “Yes,” said Benjamin. “There’s this closet downstairs that’s full of clothes. It’s for travelers going to different cultures, different worlds, travelers who might need disguises, including some people my size. We have stuff from more than a hundred years ago in there, and I found some great pieces for my costume.”

  “Your costume?” said Travis.

  Benjamin grinned. “Pirate. Maya said.”

  “Pirate?” Gwenda said. She smiled, too.

  “What are you going to be?” Travis asked her.

  Gwenda folded her arms and lifted her head. “I’m going to be a witch.”

  “Whoa!” said Travis.

  “Maybe one of those witches with long noses and warts!”

  “Whoa!” Travis turned to Maya. “What about you?”

  “I haven’t worked out my costume yet. I mean, I know what I want it to be, but I’m not sure how to do it yet. But—I should tell you—I asked Helen if we could go with her, and she said yes. And she’s got some friends who are going with us, too. Including Sibyl.” Maya looked toward Helen and Sibyl, several rows up, who were talking to each other, red-blonde head next to brunette. Sibyl wore a brown dress today. Yiliss gleamed golden around Sibyl’s neck.

  “Wait a sec,” said Benjamin.

  “That’s not going to be as much fun, going with people we have to keep secrets from,” Gwenda said.

  “Peter’s coming, too.”

  “Hey!” said Benjamin.

  “I’m sorry, you guys,” Maya said. “I didn’t know you’d feel this way about it. I wasn’t even sure you were coming. And whatever happens, Peter was always coming with us. Otherwise he’d be stuck in grown-up hell, having to have the parents take him around.”

  “Don’t get all bent about it,” Travis said. “A bunch of people running around in costumes. All kinds of fun without even getting that weird. Plus, the whole candy thing. What am I going to wear?”

  “Come look in the closet after training today,” Benjamin said.

  Travis’s smile spread into a grin. “Okay!”

  Mr. Ferrell started taking attendance and everybody quieted down. Sibyl glanced back at Maya, eyebrows up. Maya gave her a finger wave, and Sibyl smiled. Yiliss’s fringe flickered.

  “You’re friends with her now?” Travis muttered, looking down at his social studies textbook.

  “It’s complicated,” Maya muttered back. “Tell you later.”

  At lunch, Benjamin sat with Travis and his eighth-grade friends. Maya watched them covertly from the Janus House table. Travis’s friends were all bigger than Benjamin, and it seemed like they were teasing him, but he was smiling and talking back. None of it looked mean. It made Benjamin sparkle in a new way.

  She glanced toward Helen’s table, where Sibyl sat with Janine and Tovah. Helen, Janine, and Tovah were having some kind of lively discussion. Sibyl sucked a protein drink very slowly, not taking the straw out of her mouth long enough to talk. Yiliss was trying to sneak a fringe down into the can and Sibyl kept flicking him away from it. All the other girls laughed, and Sibyl lowered her drink and smiled at them. She looked so lost.

  “Maya. Maya. Earth to Maya,” said Twyla, next to her. She snapped her fingers in front of Maya’s face.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, what is going on here? Why is Ben at some other table today? What’s all this about Halloween?”

  Rowan said, “None of that is important. Tell us more about Sibyl and her sissimi.”

  “Not here,” Maya said. “Not now.”

  “What’s that? I never heard that part!” Twyla glanced at Sibyl.

  “Don’t look,” Maya whispered.

  Twyla turned and
picked up her bread cup, scraping at it with her spoon, her attention all in front of her. “What is that about?” she muttered.

  Gwenda gripped Maya’s wrist. “Yes, Maya, what is that about?” she asked in a low voice.

  Shock her? Rimi wondered.

  No. But thanks.

  “I didn’t know who Columba would tell,” Maya murmured. She left her wrist in Gwenda’s grip and used her other hand to feel in her brown paper lunch bag, hoping for something else to eat, but she’d already scarfed her PBJ and Twinkies and the apple she’d packed last night. She wadded up the bag. “I feel like I shouldn’t be talking about this here. Honestly.”

  Gwenda turned to Kallie, silent so far. “Kallie, did you know?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Columba told us. Probably she was telling Rowan most, but she let me hear, too.”

  “Sibyl has a sissimi,” Gwenda muttered.

  “I found out yesterday. I feel like a bad person, telling people when it’s her secret, but I thought Columba should know. I thought the people looking for the lost sissimi should know.”

  “Sibyl has a sissimi and she’s coming trick-or-treating with us?” Gwenda asked.

  Maya shrugged. “It sort of fell together that way.”

  “This holiday is just getting weirder and weirder,” said Twyla.

  “I’m coming with you,” Rowan said.

  “What? No. Nobody wants you,” Maya said. She put her hand over her mouth, but it was too late to keep the words inside.

  The eye Maya could see past his hair narrowed. Red touched his cheek. “That doesn’t matter,” he said after too long a pause. “I’m coming.”

  Sarutha met Maya at the bottom of the Janus House Apartments’ staircase after school. Maya glanced toward Columba’s door, then crossed the entry hall to join Sarutha. They went up to Sarutha’s jewel apartment and Sarutha poured tea for both of them. Carrying their teacups, they went out to the balcony. It was cold and overcast. The last leaves were falling. Maya smelled damp on the air, and the spice of crushed, dried leaves. She felt an autumn melancholy. She had the feeling this might be the last time she and Sarutha had beverages on the balcony together.

  “Namdi, are you handing me over to Columba now?” she asked when she and Sarutha had seated themselves with steaming teacups warming their hands.

  “Won’t that suit you better?” Sarutha asked.

  “What if I said no?”

  “We would try to respect that, Maya, my dear, but everybody in the family finds their work and does it, and the sooner the better. We will try to be patient with you as you find your place. It’s just that the indicators are so clear: security is where you belong. We know it’s not the way of the outside world, at least in this country, to have children find their callings so young, but we have always done it this way.”

  “You’re not my First Family,” Maya said. She had a flash of desire to run back to her parents and her brother and sister and have them all move away, anywhere but here. She was twelve. She didn’t want a career. She wanted to have summer to play, and fall, winter, and spring to learn. She wanted to be a kid.

  “We try to respect that,” Sarutha said.

  They can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do, Rimi thought fiercely. I’ll stop them.

  I don’t know if we can fight everything they can do, especially if they have people like Ara-Kita and Kachik-Vati on their side.

  Ara-Kita and Kachik-Vati are on our side, not theirs.

  Are you sure?

  I’m sure of Kita and Vati, Rimi thought. Do you want to fight this now?

  I—Maya sighed and sipped tea—No. I like Columba, anyway.

  So do I. And we have each other. They don’t really understand that yet.

  Might be better to keep that to ourselves.

  Rimi sent a smile.

  Maya set down her teacup and hugged herself, including Rimi in the embrace. Rimi wrapped her in answering warmth. Whatever happens, we will have choices, Rimi thought.

  Thank you, Rimi. Thank you.

  “Maya, my dear,” Sarutha said. She stroked Maya’s hair.

  Maya looked at her watch. “Time for principles of magic,” she said. She stood up and shrugged into her backpack.

  Sarutha rose, too, set down her cup. “Maya,” she said softly, and opened her arms.

  Maya closed her eyes and let Sarutha’s hug enfold her. For the past six weeks she had been working with Sarutha three afternoons a week before she went to her other classes, discussing everything magical, following Sarutha through the huge pile of Janus House and the warren of secret places beneath it. Sarutha had been patient and pleasant, answering Maya’s many questions. She had been a good guide and guardian. She had felt trustworthy and safe to Maya.

  Sarutha smelled like black tea and roses, talcum powder and sunlight. Her arms were thin and strong and warm. “I’m not going anywhere,” she murmured against Maya’s hair. “You’ll just be too busy to see me.”

  “Maybe,” Maya said, and eased out of Sarutha’s embrace. She went to the door of the apartment, stood on the threshold and looked back, memorizing the open cages, the reaching plants, the cloudy sky beyond the balcony doors, the spidery velvet silhouette of the old woman against the light. She lifted her hand, stepped out, and shut the door behind her.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Principles of Magic class let out early. Maya had not been able to make “Catch and Hold” work any better than the previous five techniques the teacher had taught them. She had felt completely helpless as each of the Littles caught her and made her stand still. It had involved a phrase in Kerlinqua and some complicated hand gestures, both of which Maya could perform perfectly, the teacher said. Even the Littles who couldn’t get the pronunciation quite right made the technique work for them. They spent a lot of time giggling and practicing on each other.

  I could have caught and held them, Rimi said. And they didn’t catch me, not even once.

  Maybe next time, Maya thought. Then she thought, Maybe we don’t need a next time. I’m tired of seeing all the things these kids can do that I’ll never be able to master.

  I want to know, Rimi thought. Once I know what’s possible, I will figure out how to do it. We will have all these powers, Maya.

  Maya sighed. She paused outside Columba’s apartment, then lifted her hand and knocked on the door.

  Columba opened the door. She looked frazzled. “Maya,” she said. “Just the person I need! Come in.”

  In the kitchen, a pot of tea steamed on the table, and Evren sat in one of the chairs, futzing with thin strips of metal, wires, pliers, and a little silver hammer. He looked up and smiled. “Hey, Maya. Hey, Rimi,” he said. “Oh, good.”

  “What?”

  “We’re trying to develop a sissimi detector,” Columba said. Evren held up a mess of woven metal strips and wires. He took one of the loose metal strips and attached it at the top, with a wire piercing its center so it looked like a badly designed propeller.

  He sang a short phrase to it three times, and it whirled around, then stopped, quivering, with one end pointing toward Maya. “Ha!” he said.

  “Fantastic,” said Columba.

  Rimi reached for it. It is— she began. Maya sensed her filtering into the device, weaving between its parts. Oh! Oh! This tastes—it is all filisizz! Rimi fluttered with delight.

  The propeller whirled so madly it fell off.

  “What?” Evren said. He shook the device.

  Rimi laughed and escaped from it.

  “She went into it,” Maya said.

  “Oh. Yeah, it wasn’t set up for that. Guess I better build in that parameter.” He retrieved the propeller from the floor and fitted it back onto the shaft. It spun toward Maya again. “All right, now I just have to clean it up.”

  “What kind of range do you think it’ll have?” Columba asked.

  “No way to tell until we field test it.”

  “Maya,” Columba said.

  “I guess we could go outsi
de and I could walk away and see how far I go before the detector stops pointing toward you,” Evren said. “That would be good data.”

  “Once you establish that,” Columba said, “I’d really like Maya use the detector to sense that Sibyl girl’s sissimi. If we could track her that way—”

  “Maya can’t do that,” Evren said. “She has Rimi.”

  “Oh, right. Maybe we can get Rowan or Benjamin to try it in school. Maya, you were the answer to my mind’s prayer, but maybe you had some other reason for stopping by?”

  Maya slumped into the kitchen chair opposite Evren’s. “Sarutha said . . .”

  Columba sat next to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?” she asked gently.

  Maya put her hands over her face. “I can’t learn principles of magic, and I can’t sing things into doing what I want. I can pronounce things and gesture and sing right, but they don’t work.”

  “Not all of us can use those disciplines,” Columba said. She rubbed her hand up and down Maya’s upper arm and shoulder.

  “I’m not like any of you. I don’t have magic inside me.”

  “You do,” said Columba. “You have the magic of observation and recall. You see things, and you can summon their images afterward.”

  Maya lowered her hands and stared at Columba.

  “That’s a wonderful magic,” Columba said, “and Rimi has other skills, no? Look what she did to the detector. She can pick things up at a distance, too, and bring them to you. I wonder what the weight limit is on her lifting ability . . . we could test.... You two have the makings of a terrific criminal.”

  “I don’t want to be a criminal,” Maya said, and thought, You don’t know the half of it.

  “Well,” said Columba, “it’s not a crime if you do it as part of our security force.”

  Maya crossed her arms and stared at the floor. Then she closed her eyes. Rimi, what about this? What about having Columba for our teacher instead of Sarutha? What about our doing this kind of sneaking?

  I love anything that will give me more information, Rimi thought. Sarutha has been good to you, but lately all she does is tell you what you can’t do. And she doesn’t know what we can do. She’s not even asking the right questions. At least Columba notices me.