Secret of Light (17 page)

She had spent weeks working all hours of the day and night trying to decipher Leonardo's notebook. There was no doubt she had made progress. She'd used a site on the Internet to translate all the Italian, and though it was clunky in places, she felt confident she knew what most of the words meant. She'd copied the first words of his notebook into her own:
He turns not back who is bound to a star.
But the rest of the ideas described were so scattered, she could hardly make any sense out of them at all. And the diagrams! Leonardo's sketches were beautiful
and carefully rendered, but they didn't correlate with his written work in any way she could understand. And there was nothing about a time machine anywhere.

“He must have been writing in code,” she muttered.

Kate stirred in her bed. “Turn off the light,” she complained, her voice almost completely muffled by her pillow.

“Okay, okay, go back to sleep,” muttered Darrell, and reached to turn off the light. She could always put it on again in a few minutes when Kate went back to sleep.

“What are you up to, Darrell?” Kate's voice, thick with sleep, came through the darkened room.

“Nothing. Studying. Go back to sleep.”

“At two-thirty in the morning? Are you crazy?”

“Okay, okay, I'll lie down for a few minutes if it'll get you to leave me alone.”

Kate sat up in bed, a dark shadow in the corner. “This has gone on long enough.” All the sleep dropped from her voice and she wrapped her shoulders in her blanket and padded across the floor.

“Get off my bed. I'm going to sleep, already. I just need to set my alarm to get up early, so go back to your own bed.”

“No.” Kate tucked her feet up and wedged herself on the bottom corner of the bed. “I'm not moving until we have a talk, Darrell.”

“Oh, come
on
, Kate! Look, you've said yourself we should be asleep. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

“No you won't. You haven't really talked to me for weeks. ‘I'm working now' and ‘Leave me alone' have become your favourite phrases.”

“Well, I've been busy. We've got the test tomorrow and the project and —”

“And, nothing.” Kate reached over and snapped on Darrell's tiny book light. “I'm on to you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Kate's eyes looked heavy with sleep, but her face was determined. “I know this has something to do with the journey to meet Leonardo, because that's when you stopped having anything to do with us. And I know you've refused to go anywhere near the lighthouse, even just for a walk to look at all the construction down there. You wouldn't even go for dinner with your uncle when he asked!”

“I would have. I just had to finish up some work first. Uncle Frank's not used to waiting for his food.”

Kate leaned forward and stared into Darrell's tired eyes. “Something is going on, I know it. So spill the beans or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else — I'm going to tell Professor Tooth everything. Darrell, you are acting exactly like you did after the accident when you turned your back on everyone at home in Vancouver. I know what you're really like, and it's not this. I think she might be able to help.”

Darrell slumped back in her bed against her pillow. She was so tired she felt she didn't have a single argument left inside her. “Professor Tooth probably knows everything already,” she said numbly. “And nothing is going the way it was supposed to, so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.” She looked into a dark corner so Kate wouldn't see the tears of frustration and exhaustion welling in her eyes.

“Look, Darrell, I'm really tired too. I can give you a little good news, though. You don't have to worry about the group project.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Brodie did your section for you. He's worried about you, too, y'know.” Kate reached over and put her hand on Darrell's arm. “You are our friend. If something's bugging you, you're supposed to tell us, so we can at least try to help.”

Darrell sniffed but couldn't speak.

“Is it Conrad? I know he's been hanging around a lot lately, but maybe it's his way of trying to fit in. Paris tells me Connie's doing really well in music lately, and he hasn't been as crabby as usual. I think he might like it here a little.”

“It's not Conrad.” Darrell sat up and took a deep breath. “Kate — I went back.”

Kate nearly slipped off the bed in surprise. “What?”

“It's true.” Her words tumbled out. “I went back by myself and I got really lost and I met Leonardo, but he was a grown man and I stole his notebook.” Darrell put her face in her hands.

“But — why?”

Darrell dropped her hands. “I read he invented a time machine, and with how we have been able to move through time, I thought he might have really done it. It made sense to me — so I went back to find out the secret.”

Kate looked stunned. “But why would you do such a dangerous thing without us?”

Darrell slid her right leg out from under the covers. “Because of this,” she said, tears spilling onto her cheeks.
“Because of my leg and my dad.” She swiped at her cheek with the back of her hand. “Kate, we can travel through time! We've gone back to medieval times and the Renaissance. There
has
to be some way to control this process. If we can go all the way back hundreds of years, there
has
to be a way for me to go back a few years and stop the accident from happening.”

Kate sighed and slumped against the wall at the foot of Darrell's bed. “I had no idea,” she said slowly. She dropped the covers from her shoulders, slipped off the bottom of the bed, and walked up to where Darrell was sitting.

“You know, I hardly even remember you have only one foot,” she said, bending over to give Darrell a hug. “And I have no concept of how terrible it must be to lose a dad. It makes me sick to think about it.” She picked up her blanket again. “We're going to sit down with Brodie tomorrow and talk this thing through,” she said with conviction, curling back into her bed. “And if we need to ask Professor Tooth for her help, too, we will. We'll find an answer for you, Darrell, I promise.”

Darrell flipped off her light and lay back down in bed. She wiped her face with the edge of her sheet, and her heart a little lighter, tiredness took her and she slept at last.

A fire crackled in the fireplace and a few candles on the old stone mantle bobbed their flaming heads as though to keep time with the beat of the wind on the glass. The test had not been the terrible thing it had grown to in Darrell's mind, and she curled up in the corner of a
couch beside the fireplace, the scent of burning cedar in her nostrils and her sketchbook open, ignored on her lap. She had been staring into space but came back to herself as the door to the old study opened with a crash and Brodie came hurrying in.

“Sorry!” he called, in response to the startled looks from everyone in the room. “The wind caught it.”

“Mind the candles, dear!” called Mrs. Follett, nervously glancing up from her newspaper at the candles Kate had placed on the mantle.

Brodie pulled up an old wooden chair beside the fire and rubbed his hands together. His fingers looked red and raw, and the cuffs of his jacket were soaked through. The December wind howled around the tower and the rain drove in torrents against the windows. Kate, sitting at a table nearby, shivered and tucked a blanket around her feet. She looked disapprovingly at Brodie.

“You're soaked! What were you doing out on a night like this?”

He grinned and didn't answer directly. The side of his face turned toward Kate remained completely still, but his left eye winked quickly at Darrell.

“I have nothing to say to you, Miss Stick-in-the-Mud,” he shot at Kate. He held his frozen fingers to the fire, and Darrell noticed his eyes sparkled with something that could be excitement.

“You've probably been stuck behind a computer screen all day, not even lifting your eyes,” he added.

Kate tossed her head. “You couldn't be more wrong. I've been practising my patterns in the gym.” She grinned
back at him for the first time. “Want me to show you the new flip I've just mastered?”

Brodie shook his head hastily. “I've never had the pleasure of a personal demonstration — and I plan to keep it that way.”

Darrell patted the other cushion on her small couch, but Brodie shook his head and pulled his wooden chair closer to the fire. Since the beginning of school, the first-year students had developed somewhat of an evening tradition, a sort of Eagle Glen musical chairs without the music. There were only three old overstuffed chairs in the study room, with the rest of the furniture being of the more utilitarian variety, and most nights the demand for the soft old chairs was high. The room was cozy in spite of its tall ceilings, probably because of the old fireplace, faced with round river rock of many varieties and colours, soot stained and well used. It was kept banked with wood and kindling from an enormous woodpile, which offered occupation to students who unluckily were found at loose ends in the hallways by Mrs. Follett.

“Nothing to do, dear?” she would crow in a triumphant voice, and then haul off the offending loafer for an invigorating hour of wood-chopping and stacking.

“You're up to something,” repeated Kate dryly, as Brodie pulled out his notebook and began his homework. “You're soaking wet and you keep changing the subject.”

Darrell looked keenly at Brodie, who raised his eyebrows slightly and indicated with a tiny nod of his head the number of other students in the room.

Darrell caught on immediately. “Oh, you know Brodie,” she scoffed to Kate. “Always out chasing down one fossil or another. I'm sure he'll show us when he's ready.”

Kate finally caught sight of the guarded look in Darrell's eyes and gave an understanding nod of her own. She turned back to the table where her laptop sat blinking and beeping gently and was immediately engrossed in the latest computer program she was developing. As her fingers flew over the keys, she kept up a steady stream of muttering to herself.

Darrell returned to her work. She had almost finished her section of the group project, and late or not, she was determined to pull her own weight and not let her friends down any more than she had already. Today in history class, only she and Conrad had not finished their assignments, but she had spoken to Professor Tooth after the class and promised to have the work completed by the next day. Conrad had curled his lip as he hurtled by her on his way out the door.

A light flared through the windows and lit the room for an instant with a blue flash. Immediately all the lights snapped out. The fire and Kate's candles on the mantlepiece continued to burn merrily, providing only enough light to make out the outlines of the tables and chairs.

“Lightning in December? This is the weirdest weather,” Kate complained. Her computer beeped for a moment, then it, too, succumbed to the lack of power. “Rats! Guess I forgot to recharge my battery.”

Mrs. Follett was up and bustling around the room. “I'm sorry, but there's not enough light to study by, my dears,” she proclaimed, the cheer in her voice clear from a duty night cut irrevocably short. “Let me dig out some emergency flashlights and you can make your way up to your rooms!”

There was a general groan of dismay at this. Power outages were not uncommon on this rugged stretch of coast, and while they usually didn't last long, they often meant an early night for the students.

Mrs. Follett pulled ten or twelve old flashlights from a cupboard near the door. She steered each protesting student into the hall, toward the stairs.

“Now remember to bring those back down in the morning, my dears. You know the rules! No power means early to bed. Good night! Good night!”

In the darkened hallway, Brodie took advantage of the milling students and the bobbing flashlights to hiss in Darrell's ear.

“Library in ten minutes. Bring Kate.”

Darrell nodded and squeezed Brodie's arm to show she understood

“Up you go, my dears!” Mrs. Follett insisted cheerily, and then scurried off down the hall toward the office, clutching her flashlight and her tea cup.

Lily appeared beside Darrell and yawned cavernously.

“I'm ready for bed, anyway. I have a practice in the morning to get set for the meet this weekend. We're at the University Pool in Vancouver and their meets are always pretty intense.”

Darrell felt relieved. Lily could always be counted on for an early night. It would make tonight's discussion with Kate and Brodie so much easier, and with Lily snoring, their privacy was guaranteed.

With the power off, Lily fell asleep in record time and Kate and Darrell tiptoed out of their room to the sound of her gentle snores less than ten minutes after they had changed into their pyjamas. The wind tore around the old school in noisy gusts and the walls creaked and groaned as the storm hurled its full force against the old building perched on the ragged coast.

Both Darrell and Kate carried flashlights but kept the beams turned off for the trip through the halls. The route was a simple one, as the library stood down the hall and around a corner from the girls' dormitory wing. Brodie's trip, from his room the floor above, would take a few moments longer, so the girls crept through the rows of books and into the “silent study” section near the back of the library to find a place to sit and wait. Delaney followed them like a shadow.

Darrell flicked on her flashlight, illuminating the narrow aisle. “There are no windows back here,” she hissed, “so I think we can have a bit of light.”

Kate nodded and turned on her own flashlight. Unlike the hardwood floors adorning most of the school rooms, the library floor was carpeted, and in the light of Kate's flash Darrell quickly pulled three chairs together. Kate, wearing the blanket from her bed around her shoulders, hopped quickly into one of the chairs.