Black Creek Crossing

“And he follows you around, and he showed us where the book was hidden, and then he led us out here.”

“Maybe this is where he lives,” Angel said, certain she knew what Seth was going to say next, but not wanting to hear it. “Maybe we were just following him home.”

“Or maybe we weren’t,” Seth said. “And we didn’t just follow him, remember? He made us go where he wanted us to go. Maybe dogs do that sometimes, but did you ever hear of cats doing it? I saw on TV once where a woman claimed her cat yowled to wake her up when the house was on fire, but if you ask me, the cat was just scared and wanted out before it got burned up.”

“But if Houdini really was showing us where the book was, and really did lead us here…” Her voice trailed off, and she knew she didn’t want to go any further in the direction in which the thought was taking her.

“What about the marks on the mirror?” Seth asked. “The ones that made us look for something under the stairs in the first place?”

“He’s a cat, Seth,” Angel said, her voice taking on an edge. “Cats don’t write on mirrors with lipstick!”

“Then who did it?”

“I don’t know! Maybe I did it! Maybe I was sleepwalking or something! But it wasn’t Houdini! He’s just a cat!”

“What if he’s not?” Seth shot back. “What if he’s—” He hesitated, then the words came out: “What if he’s something else?”

The words hung between them as the silence stretched. They both turned to look at Houdini, who was still sitting on the hearth. But he was no longer grooming himself. Instead, he was staring at them, as if waiting for something.

“I–If he’s not just a cat,” Angel finally breathed, her voice barely audible, “what is he?”

Now it was Seth who couldn’t quite bring himself to voice the thought taking shape in his mind. “I don’t know,” he said. “But let’s try something.” He took off his backpack, opened it, and removed the ancient leather- bound book.

As both Angel and Seth watched, Houdini’s tail began twitching, then his body tensed as he rose to his feet and stretched his neck toward the book.

“I think we better see if we can figure out what this is,” Seth said, setting the book on the counter.

“How old do you think it is?” Angel whispered.

The book lay on the dusty counter, and even though barely enough sunlight filtered through the open door to make it possible to read, the tome had lost none of its strange glow. Indeed, the illusion of it somehow being lit from within was even stronger here than when they brought it out of the shadows of the basement. Nor did it look quite as ancient. The leather seemed slightly less worn, and though the three ornately embossed letters — or symbols — on the cover were still unreadable, the gold seemed slightly brighter than Angel remembered it.

Seth reached out as if to open it, but hesitated, his fingers hovering above the cover. “It’s got to be hundreds of years old,” he replied, his voice as low as Angel’s, even though they were alone in the tiny cabin. “It looks like it might fall apart if I even try to open it.”

“But we can’t even see the title if we don’t open it,” Angel said, her voice trembling with anticipation.

Still Seth hesitated. If he tried to open the book and the cover fell off or the pages fell out, the book could be ruined. Yet even as he thought about the damage it might do, his curiosity overrode his caution, and his fingers touched the book.

And instantaneously jerked away.

“What’s wrong?” Angel asked.

Seth’s gaze remained fixed on the book. “It — It felt hot,” he stammered.

Gingerly, Angel reached out, but instead of touching the book, she let her hand hover over it. Though she knew it was impossible — knew it had to be some kind of illusion — the strange glow from within the volume appeared to brighten.

Very slowly, ready to jerk her hand away in an instant, Angel lowered her palm until it was resting on the book.

It felt warm, but certainly not hot.

She lifted the right edge of the cover, gently opening it.

The cover held, and inside it was a page that was blank except for an inscription done in a handwriting that looked so old-fashioned that Seth was certain it had been written when the book was new. It was near the top of the page, slightly off center:

“Wow,” Seth breathed. “Look at that handwriting! It looks really, really old!”

“But what does it mean?” Angel asked, her voice trembling with excitement. “ ‘For Forbearance’?”

“Maybe it was a present,” Seth suggested. “Like if someone was having some kind of trouble, but got through it, you know?”

Gingerly, Angel turned the flyleaf and they found themselves staring at the title page, whose words were in the same ornate lettering as that which was embossed in gold on the cover. Here, though, in stark black against the white of the page, they were far more legible:

Carefully, Angel reclosed the volume, and now, after they’d seen the title page, the gold embossing on the cover became clear:

“Do you suppose it’s some kind of cookbook?” Seth asked. “Or maybe like folk medicine? You know — herbs and stuff like that?”

Angel reopened the book and began turning the pages.

All of them were beautifully illuminated, the first letter of each word so intricately drawn that they were almost lost in decorative imagery. Indeed, most of the initial letters were only identifiable after they’d deciphered the rest of the words the letters began.

Each page had a heading, but none of them seemed to make sense; beneath the word “Spring” there were four lines of verse that seemed to mean nothing:

The initial D of the quatrain was entwined in a beautifully colored mass of flowering vines that, though rooted in that first capitalized letter, wandered all over the page, framing the entire verse in flowers and foliage. All but concealed in the vines was some kind of serpent, its mouth wide open, its fangs curving with such menace that Angel shuddered as she gazed at it.

For several long seconds, Angel and Seth studied the verse, and then Angel resumed turning the pages.

On each page there was another verse, each as incomprehensible as the first.

“Do you understand any of it?” she finally asked Seth as she turned the last page and closed the book.

“Yeah,” Seth sighed. “A few words.”

“It’s like it doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “It’s almost like the stuff in Alice in Wonderland.” As the words came into her mind, Angel began to recite them, letting them roll around on her tongue, enjoying the sound of them now as much as she had when she first read them, back when she was only eight. “ ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe’—”

“ ‘All mimsy were the borogoves,’ ” Seth finished. “ ‘And the mome raths outgrabe.’ ”

Angel looked at him in surprise. “You memorized it too?”