Secrets of Stone and Sea, page 7
Kai turned. Oh no. It was more than smoke now. Orange tongues of fire had begun to blacken the trees that made up the binding word.
“Peter!” Kai yelled. “Let’s go!”
Peter rubbed his forehead, but he didn’t move away from the fire. So Kai reached in and grabbed his arm. “Come on!”
Peter stumbled, but soon found his footing. Dad and Grandma reached out for them, and without looking back, they ran into the forest.
The rustling and creaking had stopped, and the trees lay lifeless and broken once more. Kai’s heart leaped. They’d succeeded in doing what they’d come here for.
But there was still the fire. As flames spread across the ground to the fallen trees, the family didn’t stop until they reached their car. As they drove back to Seaspire, fire trucks passed them, sirens wailing, on their way to save Dogtown.
CHAPTER 9
SEVEN SEALS
PETER
Peter’s hand itched since he’d touched that binding. Or maybe he was just imagining it.
As they pulled into Grandma’s driveway, Peter wondered what had possessed him to touch the symbol. After all, they had no idea that the word even was a binding, let alone something a touch would activate. Maybe, he figured, if Kai had gained a special ability from interacting with the sea monster, then Peter did, too. Maybe something about it called to him.
Right after he’d touched the symbol, it was like the fire started in his own mind, also. He saw a burst of reddish gold and felt a release, like he’d completed a chore he had dreaded. It was dizzying. If Kai hadn’t pulled him away, he wouldn’t have noticed how the fire around him was spreading.
Still, why did the sea monster’s attack only write the symbol in a clump of fallen trees? If it was trying to destroy the seal, it failed so badly that it actually helped them find it.
There had to be more going on here than what it seemed.
Once inside, the family collapsed on various couches and chairs, except for Kai, who claimed the floor.
“That hurt,” he moaned.
Grandma waved an arm at the kitchen. “I have disinfectants and bandages in there. Give me a moment.”
“I got it,” Dad said, and, groaning, stood. A few moments later, the twins, Dad, and Grandma had slathered on antibacterial cream and were dotted with brightly colored bandages.
Sophie wandered in, smelling like caramel. “Whoa,” she said, looking them over. “What happened to you?”
“The forest attacked us,” Kai said.
“The forest…?” Sophie trailed off. Then she shook her head and raised a bag. “I brought home peanut butter fudge. Help yourself.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” Kai asked.
“Um, no, not really. I—I did some research on various sea deities that could be related to the Sea, but honestly, it seems like a dead end. Sorry. My notes are on the kitchen table if you want to look them over.”
Peter frowned, watching his sister. This wasn’t the same girl who came to their rescue at the cemetery. What was wrong with Sophie? Staying behind, not interested in what happened, not dripping with optimism? Sophie wouldn’t act against her family, but maybe she really didn’t believe this was all real.
To be honest, sometimes Peter had a hard time believing it all.
Sophie spoke up. “But was my drone helpful?”
“Kind of,” Dad said. He handed her the depleted drone. “It just ran out of batteries,” he said. “It’s fine. But it fell out of the air when things started getting really weird.”
“So it was kind of an early warning signal,” Peter said.
Sophie nodded. “That’s good, I guess. I should … see if Mom emailed us anything. Enjoy the fudge.”
She handed the fudge to Dad and left.
Dad watched her go. “I’m worried about her,” he said, then shook his head, looked at the boys, and added, “One crisis at a time.”
“So was that it?” Peter asked after Dad sat down. “The word said ‘binding.’ Did we seal the sea monster away again?”
That would be wonderful. After hard work and a terrifying walk through a moving forest, they’d reactivated the seal that they’d broken when they threw the hot dog into the sea. The job was done, and Peter could go back to just enjoying the summer.
“Maybe,” Kai said. He beamed at Peter. “You got a superpower, too! I read the words, and you closed the gate. Nice teamwork, twin.”
Peter smiled, causing a scratch on his face to sting.
Grandma moved to grab some fudge from Dad, who pulled the box away without taking his eyes from the window.
“I don’t think we’re done yet,” he said. “Look at the ocean.”
Together, Peter and Kai went to the window.
A news van was parked on the beach, along with a small group of spectators. All were watching a dark cloud shadow the ocean. Waves rose higher than Peter had ever seen them, under that dark patch, and crashed back to the sea, though all around the shadow the sea was calm. It was a small tempest, brewing in their backyard.
“That doesn’t look natural,” Kai said.
“And now we’ve established the obvious.” Peter groaned. “It’s not over. What did we even do today if it’s not over?”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Grandma said, hobbling to her feet. She put an arm around Peter. “I’m sure it wasn’t in vain. Maybe tomorrow we can go back to Dogtown.”
“We are not going back there,” Dad said. “Not after today.”
“Then let’s see what we remember,” Grandma said. “Alex, get your camera now and let’s make a permanent memory.”
Dad pulled out his phone. “Battery is dead, just like the drone.”
Peter shivered.
So Dad got a pad of paper and a pencil and the family recounted the day, from figuring out it was Dogtown to leaving the forest behind. Peter explained what it felt like breaking the seal, and Kai interrupted, “You mean activating it. We already broke the seal. Whatever we did today was a rebinding.”
“Activating it,” Peter corrected.
“How did you know where to go?” Dad asked Kai.
Kai shrugged. “The trees fell for a reason. I figured something powerful knocked them over, so I followed them to the center.”
“Disobeying me.”
“But it worked out great!”
Peter watched his dad. “You okay, Dad?”
Dad was chewing his cheek, not fudge, and his fingers kept flexing. “Huh? Oh, yeah. I just … Okay, trees laying a path, of sorts. It sounds kind of familiar.” He rubbed his face and yelped as he touched a splinter. “I’d better deal with this.”
Dad stood and left.
“If it’s not over,” Peter asked, “then what do we do now? Was there anywhere else in the world that the Sea attacked?”
Kai and Grandma didn’t answer. Then Grandma, leaning heavily on her cane, swooped down on the fudge box. “Let’s give it a rest and pick it up when we feel more refreshed. How about you boys help me eat this and sort through my collection? Next time, we’ll need to be better prepared.”
“Next time.” Because there would be a next time. Because this nightmare Peter never meant to sign up for wasn’t over yet.
There was still a chance to fail.
But he and Kai, who looked thrilled, followed Grandma to her weapons closet and helped her categorize her collection based on resiliency and how capable each blade was at fighting monster trees.
* * *
A couple of hours later, as Peter was hefting a medieval ax (“Leave that one, dear, it was made for executioners,” Grandma said), he heard Dad and Sophie talking in the hall.
As Kai picked up a flail, Peter sneaked to the door.
“I wish we’d brought my laptop instead of yours,” Dad was saying. “It’s old and slow, but I have access to scholarly databases that might have given you more than this.”
“I know. I tried. I thought I’d start by looking into Poseidon, but … then I looked into Aegir, and Lir, and Oceanus, and there are so many stories about them. If even half of them are just exaggerations of the truth about this thing attacking the boys, then we’re in trouble.”
“They’re just stories, Soph. At the end of the day, this thing is just the ocean with a face.”
“Isn’t that bad enough?” Sophie asked.
Dad was silent for a moment. “Is this about those voices you heard?”
“No, of course not,” Sophie said quickly.
“You can tell me if it is. It’s okay to be scared. This is scary.”
She let out a half-hearted laugh. “Me? Scared? You know me better than that.” Both were silent for a while. “Here,” Sophie said. “You can take the laptop and do whatever research you can. I … I gotta go clear my head.”
“Okay. Be safe,” Dad said.
What was going on with Sophie?
Dad sighed, and knocked on the door. Peter opened it to see his dad, looking tired but in possession of the laptop.
“Let’s figure out what we’re dealing with,” Dad said. He handed the laptop to Kai.
Kai sat with the laptop open in front of him. “Weather patterns, anyone?”
Grandma nodded, and Kai did a quick search, then pushed the laptop away in disgust. “Anomalies here and over the North Sea. Nothing new.”
Peter leaned back. “Dad, didn’t you say the path of trees sounded familiar to you?”
Dad frowned. “Yeah, it did. I don’t know from where. A song, maybe? Or a poem?”
Kai got to searching again. “‘Path of trees … song or poem…”
Peter watched as Kai picked an entry written in German and began to read it quietly. “Um, Dad? You know poets. Who’s Roger MacHale?”
Dad stood up and paced, staring into space. “It’s familiar. I’ve heard that name.”
“Me too,” Peter said. When the family looked at him, he said, “It’s that guy who lived at the lighthouse. Todd told us about him. He left because he thought it was haunted.”
Dad snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Kai, search for his poems.”
Kai did, pulling up a page of seven small verses, in English this time. Reading the introduction, Kai said, “This says Roger MacHale would wake up from nightmares and find himself sitting at his desk, having written a series of cryptic poems in his sleep. That was the final straw, and he left the lighthouse.”
Peter wondered, for a moment, if MacHale had the same kind of nightmares he had been having. Seaspire flooding, sunken cities, terrible storms. If so, he didn’t blame the man for running away.
Kai continued, “He gave the poems to his sister and then packed up the lighthouse and moved. She published the poems.” He laughed. “There are a lot of comments under the post arguing whether this is a hoax or a scary online story like a creepypasta, or if it really happened. The consensus seems to be creepypasta.”
“But we know better,” Peter said. “The lighthouse was built right by the gate to the Sea’s prison.”
“Maybe ground there is cursed,” Grandma said. “Maybe something spoke to MacHale while he was sleeping and he wrote those hidden truths into poems.”
“They sell pamphlets of those poems at the Seaspire Tourism Center,” Dad said. “That’s where I heard of him.”
“Look at the first poem.” Peter pointed.
Peter looked as Kai started reading out loud:
“1.
If land in common meets the sea,
And find ye path of trunk and tree,
What man has built, Mother sets free.
Inspired past and future see:
Mongrel town, lost history.
’Neath pine and boulder find the key
Then fire burn, and seeker flee.”
Peter sat up. “That sounds familiar,” he said.
Kai frowned. “Land in common?”
Dad nodded. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? I doubt MacHale himself had any idea what it meant. But we do. ‘Mongrel town.’ Dogtown, anyone? And the place is known as Dogtown Commons.”
“Path of trunk and tree,” Kai said. “That’s what we found.”
“And boulders with inspiring phrases carved on them,” Grandma said. “‘Inspired past and future.’ Words carved in stone, meant to last.”
Fire burn. Peter looked down at his hand, which had stopped itching. “The poem even knew about what happened when the binding was activated.” He looked at the verses. “But there are seven of them.”
Kai frowned. “The first one was about the seal at Dogtown. What if the rest are about other seals?”
“Seven is a good ritual number,” Grandma said. “It’s the number of magic.”
Peter groaned. Seven. So it wasn’t even sort of over. Six more to go, and less than a week to track down the others and activate them, too. And if the first one had vicious trees guarding it, what protections would the others have? Peter’s stomach felt full of wet sand.
Kai, however, saw it differently. “Okay, great! We’ve already got one of them, and we have the poems. We can find the next one now, no problem. MacHale must have seen the seals in his nightmares and gave us these clues. Maybe the rest are in Massachusetts, too. Dogtown’s was.”
“What do the other poems say?” Peter asked.
Together, they read the next six poems:
2.
Where sailors return with fishy tale
To sun’s shore from sacred wave,
Where crest glitters with golden scale,
And Charles Curtis failed to save,
Upon spectral boards and under sail
A song reverbs from watery grave
Let ocean roar, and woodwork fail.
3.
In darkness deep beneath the stone
The dead still plead for breath.
In metal ground is flood of flame,
And in dust destruction’s crop is sown.
Pits run deep with blood of death
And walls are traced with like and same,
So sense by scents and rock is blown.
4.
Devils play in stonework grim,
As righteous folk to monsters turn.
Mirror and egg, a simple trick
Returned stony press and the water’s test.
Then voices taunt and needles prick,
And visions, both wicked and stern,
With twisted words the mind bedim.
5.
Fear the holy land of death,
Where spirits roam and devils dwell.
Within this land inscription strange,
Words of power, lost to time:
Island mineral may river’s path stay.
Marvel at what time doth not change
And dread the light beautiful and fell.
6.
What unhallowed beasts dwell in mire!
What deception lurks ’neath noxious ground!
Brambles trap or earth’s mouth gapes,
And serpent and hound stalk every step.
Their master walks with mammoth tread.
Mind, though solid become sand without whole spring,
The dark is only dispelled by fire.
7.
Six must fall before the last appear.
The prize is at hand, the curse at heart.
A dream turns nightmare with revealed price,
For who can pay that which asks for all?
Will you reach for peace or truth?
I set down my pen, the choice is yours:
Once land may grow, but, too, more sea.
Peter listened, heart pounding. The poems felt like his dream the night before: unearthly, twisted, impossible to understand.
When Kai finished reading, Peter said, “Is it just me, or did those poems mention death and curses an awful lot?”
No one answered him. They all seemed to be thinking the same thing, though. Dad shifted and opened his mouth to say something.
Kai didn’t let him. “Did anyone else notice the rhymes change?” he said, waving the paper.
Dad brightened. “Yes! The first poem has only one rhyme used seven times, the second two, and so on until the last has seven unrhymed lines.”
“Why does he do that, English teacher?”
Dad’s good mood left. “No idea. It’s not a common meter or poetic form. MacHale must have come up with it on his own. I’d say it’s a sign he didn’t know what he was doing, but—”
“But there’s a pattern,” Kai said, looking at the screen.
“Well,” Grandma said, picking up the laptop. “We’re wasting time. Let’s figure out our second riddle. Where sailors return with fishy tale. That’s easy. Massachusetts has many harbors and fishermen. We’re going to the ocean next.”
“The ocean?” That’s where the monster lived!
As if sensing Peter’s thoughts, thunder boomed outside. The tiny, contained storm at sea had finally crashed on shore. Heavy rain pattered on the roof, and Kai and Peter glanced at each other.
“If we want to stop this thing and save Seaspire,” Grandma said, looking at torrents beyond the window, “then yes.”
Seaspire. Right. Kai’s eyes gleamed, but Peter just felt heavier.
“Okay, the ocean,” he said. “There’s a lot of that around here.”
“Crest glitters with golden scale,” Dad muttered. “Significant?”
“We’ll all get rich,” Kai said. When they stared at him, he explained, “Golden scale. Could be gold.”
“Or a gold fish,” Dad added. “Golden scale.”
“Charles Curtis failed to save,” Peter muttered. “That’s a really specific detail.”
Failed.
“Maybe that’s our key,” Kai said. “Who’s Charles Curtis?”
No one answered.
“Grandma?” Kai asked.
Grandma shook her head.
Dad picked up the laptop. “Okay. Let’s see what I can find online.”
Peter closed his eyes. He sat, deep in thought. “Charles Curtis failed to save,” he said out loud. “Charles Curtis failed to save. Charles”—he stopped for breath—“Curtis failed to save. Charles—”
