The Book of the King (18 page)

Owen had miscalculated. He was headed for the edge of the metal bin, which could take off his head, and if he missed, the street was a poor second choice.

* * *

Gordan reached the top and caught himself just as Owen left the railing. The boy looked like a doll falling, and Gordan immediately realized that Owen was going to crash. Gordan's troubles would be over. Owen had jumped of his own free will, and neither Gordan nor any of his friends would have to answer for his demise.

But just as Owen was about to kill himself on the edge of the trash bin, his body flipped and switched direction by five feet.

Five feet!

It was the difference between a smashed pumpkin with seeds all over the ground and a whole pumpkin plopping harmlessly onto trash bags full of popcorn.

“Did you see that?” Gordan said.

“How'd he do that?” someone said.

Owen wriggled to the edge of the bin and jumped to the ground.

“We'll get you, Reeder!” Gordan snarled.

Owen ran off into the darkness, his backpack bouncing.

Let us be clear. Owen Reeder was no longer afraid, despite the fact that he had found a hiding place at the back of a Laundromat. He knew where he had to go. But he also knew many people might still be looking for him. Gordan. The police. His father. Karl.

Grateful for time alone with
The Book of the King,
Owen began to read.

Nothing good is ever easy.

It seemed everywhere Owen turned in this book, something pithy perfectly described his experience. He had not come to any of the stories yet, just guidelines for life and wise sayings, all of which seemed to stoke the fire in his soul.

Allow your heart the freedom it craves and then have the courage to follow it.

And just as Owen was thinking of Clara, how she had betrayed him and yet how much he still cared for her and was attracted to her, he came across this sentence:

A friend loves through thick and thin, in every circumstance, even when difficult.

Owen wished he could talk with her again—wished they could have actually watched the movie and shared a treat afterward. Perhaps when he returned.

Good things happen on Sunday mornings.

That had never been true in Owen's life, but somehow he believed it now. And tomorrow was Sunday. Part of him wanted to run from life, from his problems, troubles, speeches, bullies, and all the rest. But deep down Owen knew that the course he was on wasn't taking him
away
from anything but rather
to
something. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew he had to go.

Owen had no idea what lay on the other side of the portal, but he felt drawn there anyway. He put the book back in his backpack and paused, pulling out a small oval frame he had kept since he was a child. In it was a photo of his mother, glum and subdued in an ornate chair, her hair pulled atop her head in a bun. She wore a checkered dress and a pendant around her neck. Owen didn't think he looked much like her. She was beautiful, and he had always considered himself, well, gangly and ugly.

Owen hurried toward the bookstore. It was late now, almost midnight, and his father would be asleep. At least, that's what he hoped as he slipped his key into the massive keyhole and stepped inside the store. He tiptoed toward the fiction room but stopped when he heard a creak behind him. He turned slowly, the hair on the back of his neck rising, and saw someone sitting in the darkness.

“I've been waiting for you,” his father said. “I knew you'd come back when you mustered the nerve.” He leaned forward and flicked on the dusty desk lamp.

Owen flinched. His father looked years older, frail, his hair grayer and his voice weak, fearful.

“Don't be frightened, Owen. I knew this day would come. It had to. I just wished it never would.”

“What's wrong with you, Father?”

“Nothing that hasn't been wrong from the start.”

“I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't want to run, but—”

“You were right to run. If you'd have stayed here, you'd have lost the book.” He waved. “I know you have it with you. But before you go, I need to give you another.” The man stood and hobbled toward Owen, making the boy look over his shoulder for Karl. “It's all right. Take this. You should know the truth.”

“About what?”

“About everything. I am told the book you were given explains much. But it does not divulge the secret contained in this book.”

Owen rubbed a hand over the slick surface. “It's just pictures.”

The man's eyes closed in a long blink, and he sighed. “I have tried to love you, Owen, or at least to pretend I did. I don't suppose I succeeded, did I?”

Emotion that Owen did not understand welled in him. “You have been a good father,” he choked. “Not always cheerful, but you provided a good home.”

“But I did nothing to help you understand. I blocked you at every turn.”

Owen started at a familiar, haunting sound outside. A wing flap?

Clearly his father heard it too. “You must hurry. Take the book and go. I will tell them you are in hiding. That you gave the book to the chosen one.”

“Chosen one?”

“Hurry!” his father said.

Owen rushed into the next room and climbed the shelf to grab the Medusa bookend. He pulled and the case opened.

Owen's father touched his shoulder. “You are an old man's only hope,” he said, his lips trembling. “I'm so sorry. It is my last wish that you might forgive me.”

Owen shook his head. “There is nothing to forgive,” he whispered.

“You may not want to return,” Mr. Reeder said. “But I will keep this entrance open if you ever wish to.”

The sounds outside grew louder. Flapping, crashing, banging.

“Thank you,” Owen said. “I wish you peace. I will see you again.”

“Yes, but you may wish you hadn't.”

And with that, Owen was gone.

* * *

The man grabbed the bookend, and the bookcase closed. He removed the Medusa head and smashed it on the floor.

The front door rattled, and he dragged himself toward it as if he had lead weights in his shoes.

In flew Karl, wild-eyed and pacing like a hungry dog.

“He is gone,” Owen's father said. “You missed him.”

Karl's eyes burned. “You let him go?”

“He was mad and spoke gibberish. Something about finding the Wormling. I sent him through the tunnel. The Slimesees will take care of him.”

Karl grinned and clenched his fists, delight showing in his eyes. “The Dragon will be pleased.”

Owen descended the stairs past the familiar glow of the torches along the wall. It was after midnight. He was as quiet as he could be, hoping not to alert the Slimesees. He laid his backpack on the table and wrapped his cherished
Book of the King
in a plastic bag.

Owen had not been able to study the book his father had given him, but the title intrigued him:
Do-It-Yourself Legacy: Remembering the Ancestors You Never Had.
He pulled it out and flipped through it as he walked, seeing families together around a dinner table. Others were individual portraits.

Owen came to a page with an oval-shaped hole in the middle, and he paused near a flickering torch. Around the hole were pictures that featured women in pioneer costumes. Owen stopped when he saw a picture of his mother, hair down to her shoulders and wearing a modest, one-piece bathing suit. Her face bore the same serious look.

Owen pulled her picture from his backpack and removed it from the frame. It fit perfectly in the hole in the album.

When Owen heard water splashing at the other end of the tunnel, he stuffed the books in his backpack and took out a candy bar. He placed it on the table and scurried to the other side of the room. What better way to lure an animal than with a chocolate-and-peanut-butter-filled bar? While it was sniffing and then devouring at the table, Owen could slip into the tunnel and cross the water to the portal.

The book described the Slimesees as a sentry at the portals near the Highlands, whatever that meant, and that it was charged by
the evil one
with preventing anyone from crossing the water into the protected area of
the sandbar, where the worm is loosed and the journey begins.

Owen wished there were some kind of an incantation that would cast a spell on the Slimesees, but the book was strangely silent about such things. He recalled a sentence from the book that said,
Nothing good is ever easy
.

* * *

If you were a Slimesees, tongue slithering in and out, eyes accustomed to the darkness, able to exist in and out of water, you might have enjoyed the prospect of a teenager with food. After decades of feasting on decaying fish and putrid matter at the bottom of the watery crevasse, you might welcome a candy bar.

But to a Slimesees, the big catch was not the candy but the boy himself. Perched in the shadows of the ceiling, blending in with the rock and moss, the Slimesees bided his time until the boy moved into the tunnel. Here there would be no escape. And if the boy happened to fall into the water, even better. That always made the meal that much more satisfying. Death came quicker for humans in the water, which meant less thrashing about while being devoured.

A long, sticky, green string of drool ran down the being's jaw to the ground. The Slimesees crawled across the ceiling and to the tunnel entrance. The boy wasn't there. He had to be moving toward the water. Toward the portal.

Perfect.

* * *

No sooner had Owen carried a torch into the tunnel than instinct told him something was behind him. He ripped off his shoes and socks and shoved them into his backpack. This would make him faster and provide more traction in the mud and slime. Maybe.

He reached the other end and edged close to the water. The sandbar had seemed only a few feet away before, but now the water looked a mile wide.

The surface of the water was still, which made Owen shiver. If the Slimesees was behind him, what had made noise in the water before?

Pitter-pat, pitter-pat
echoed inside the tunnel. Then a growl and a sharp intake of air. Suddenly Owen's flame went out.

Owen was out of options. As the noise grew closer, he took a deep breath, pulled the straps of his backpack tighter, and plunged into the dark, icy water.

Owen had read that air in the lungs helps you float, so he took a breath and tried to fill them like an inflatable toy. But having never learned to swim made fear rise in him. He poked his head above the surface and panicked when it was clear the edge he had just leaped from was now miles behind him. And the sandbar near the portal—the one that had looked close enough to toss his backpack to—seemed an equal distance the other way. Now there was sky where the cave ceiling had been. And this was not just in his mind. Owen was bobbing in the middle of some enchanted waterway surrounded by the vastness of an ocean.

It expanded after I jumped. But why? And why didn't the book warn me?