Woundabout Page 8

  “Yeah,” Cordelia said.

  “Cities are built up over themselves. Time keeps going and people build newer buildings around or on top of the older ones. Or else they become ruins. That’s… what I know. But those are buildings, towns. I don’t know about people.”

  “I just wish they were still alive. I wish that change hadn’t happened.” Cordelia looked at some more photos, then closed the album. “But I want to change from how we are now, too. I don’t want to be this sad forever. Do you think that can change?”

  “I think it can if we make it,” Connor said, looking his sister in the eye. “I think we should find all the places we can wind the crank.”

  “But we’ll get in trouble,” Cordelia said. “We’re already in trouble and they don’t even know it was us.”

  “The Mayor knows it was us.”

  “We can hide the crank. Then he won’t know.”

  “We could… but don’t you want to use it first? Don’t you want to finish what we started?” Connor asked.

  Cordelia thought for a moment and looked down at the photo album again. She looked at one photo in particular of her and her brother when she was barely able to talk, and their parents were holding them up in the air. She didn’t know who took the picture. Everyone in it looked so happy. She wanted to be that happy again.

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s finish it.”

  “If we follow the way the finger is pointing now,” Connor said, opening the map on his smartphone, “we should find the next crank spot.” He pointed at the statue on the map and drew his finger in a line, showing where it was pointing. This was a part of the map he hadn’t drawn yet, a part of the town they hadn’t explored.

  “Okay,” Cordelia said, “so we just need to get to where we think it could be and follow that line, right?”

  “Without anyone seeing us,” Connor added.

  “So we’ll be careful. And hopefully, everyone will stay down by the river for a while longer. But we have to hurry.”

  The children gathered up their things and went to retrieve the crank, too. Cordelia had put it under her bed, but when they looked for it there, she couldn’t find it. She reached under and searched with her hand, but found nothing. Connor looked, too, and took out a flashlight. They crawled under the bed, inspecting every corner. But the crank was gone.

  Chapter 19

  The children felt their blood flow faster and hotter.

  “I put it right here,” Cordelia said.

  “I know, I watched you,” Connor said.

  “Do you think Aunt Marigold found it?”

  “I don’t know. We know Gray saw it.… He knows we have it. Maybe he took it to give to the Mayor? So we wouldn’t get in trouble?”

  Cordelia sat down on the floor by her bed, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “I felt like we were doing something good.” She sniffled. “I felt like… we were supposed to be doing it. Not just ’cause the Mayor is so mean and I want to… stop anything he likes. But because… I don’t know.”

  “Me too,” Connor said, sitting down next to his sister. “I felt that way, too.”

  “Now it’s all gone,” Cordelia said. “We’re stuck in this stupid town or we’ll get sent to foster care and split up or… I miss them so much.”

  “Me too,” Connor said. They were both crying a little now, and they spoke in soft, stuttering breaths.

  “I felt like… when we were making the town better, I felt like I was getting better, too. Like, I was the park, and if it could bloom again, so could I.”

  “Dad would know what to do,” Connor said. “He’d be able to figure out a way to talk to the Mayor and get him to understand that parks should be blooming.”

  “Or Pop,” Cordelia said. “He would play a trick or joke and then the Mayor would be laughing and everyone would think it was so funny that he had tried to stop us in the first place.”

  They sat like that for a while, next to each other, shoulder-to-shoulder. Kip curled himself up by their feet. Outside, the sky grew darker. The lights weren’t on, and it felt as if their room were the only place in the whole world. A wind blew in through the window and sent shivers down their spines.

  The wind also blew a folded piece of paper off the nightstand. It landed in front of Cordelia. It was from a notebook, and had little torn holes along the side.

  “What’s that?” Connor asked, sniffling and wiping tears from his eyes. He was mostly done crying, but not because he wasn’t sad. He just didn’t feel as though he could cry anymore.

  Cordelia reached out for the paper and unfolded it. It was a note.

  Sorry to steal the thing from you, but I need it so I can make the Mayor let my family move into Woundabout. And it was sort of mine to begin with. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it safe. Cool about the park!

  —Nico

  “It wasn’t his,” Cordelia said. “It was the Mayor’s.” She suddenly felt angry instead of sad.

  “He must have snuck in and stolen it while we were at the river—he’s probably not that far ahead of us,” Connor said, leaping to his feet.

  “But if he tells the Mayor he has it, the Mayor will think he’s the one who’s been winding everything, and then his family will never be allowed into town!” Cordelia said, also standing. Though moments ago they had been weighed down by sadness, now they felt as though they were vibrating rubber bands. The crank was still out there, but their only friend could get himself in trouble because of what they had done. They had to stop him. And then, maybe… they could use the crank again.

  “He’ll be smart, though. He’ll hide it somewhere first so the Mayor can’t take it from him before he tells the Mayor he has it. Not the park—that didn’t work the first time. Maybe… the greenhouses his family runs? Then he’ll tell the Mayor he has it, but the Mayor will think it was him doing the winding—and he’ll get really mad.”

  “But then, at least we won’t be the ones getting in trouble.…”

  “Yeah,” Connor said. They were afraid of what the Mayor had said, about kicking them out of town, about foster care and being separated. They were all they had left, and they didn’t want to lose that. “But… we have to at least tell Nico that his plan will backfire.”

  “So we have to find him. He’ll be hiding it. You think in his greenhouses?”

  “That’s my best guess,” Connor said. “It’s my only guess.”

  “Mine too. So let’s go.”

  Chapter 20

  They took the note and all the other things they’d collected and put them in their backpacks. But when they went downstairs, they could see that getting out without anyone seeing them was going to be a problem. Dozens of people had gathered outside the house. They were standing around, their arms crossed, glaring at the house. Aunt Marigold was staring out the window at them.

  “Go back upstairs, children,” she said when she saw them. “I’ll keep them out.”

  “What do they want?” Cordelia asked.

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Marigold said, her hand fluttering at her neck like a dead leaf in the wind. “I think they just want to search the house—your things. But they won’t find the crank, and then it will be fine. Maybe I should just let them search.…” She sighed. “I’m not a very good aunt, am I?”

  Connor and Cordelia looked at Aunt Marigold’s profile as she stared out the window. The light coming in turned her body nearly transparent.

  “Sure you are,” Connor said.

  “Yeah,” Cordelia said. “The best.”

  Aunt Marigold turned to them.

  “Thank you,” she said. She turned back to look out the window. “I won’t let them take you away. Now go back upstairs.”

  Connor and Cordelia looked at each other and went back upstairs, worried now, not just for themselves and Nico, but for Aunt Marigold, too. They sat together on Connor’s bed. Cordelia would have said she felt as though she were trying to take a photo without a lens, and Connor would have said he felt as though he
were in a strange city without a map, but they both knew they felt the same thing.

  “Aunt Marigold really stood up for us,” Cordelia said. Connor nodded. “She’s a good aunt,” Cordelia went on. Connor nodded again. “We’re lucky she took us in. That she loves us like that.”

  “You think they’d do anything to her?” Connor asked. Cordelia shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She’s lived here for a long time. I hope not.”

  “Me too.” The children took a deep breath and went into Cordelia’s room.

  “We need to get out,” Cordelia said. She opened the window. There was a tall tree just a few feet away and no one was around. The crowd was at the front of the house.

  “That’s not safe,” Connor said. “We need a way across.”

  “There’s a ladder!” Cordelia said, remembering. She looked at the screen on her camera and flipped through the photos she had taken until she saw the one of the ladder. “It’s in the hall closet.”

  The children took the ladder from the closet, each of them holding one end, and crept down the hall as quietly as they could. They thrust the ladder out Cordelia’s window. It landed on the tree’s branch, like a bridge. Connor pushed down on it, testing it to make sure they could get across. Then, holding his breath, he climbed onto the windowsill and crawled across. The ladder didn’t fall.

  “Come on!” he whispered to his sister. She put Kip on her shoulders and started crawling across, too. But Kip wasn’t balanced well and started to fall off her shoulder, dragging her with him.

  Cordelia let out a little scream as her right knee and hand came off the ladder. Kip scrambled, and his claws dug into her back. Cordelia looked down at the ground. She wasn’t sure if she’d survive the fall, but if she did, she’d definitely break an arm or a leg. Did Woundabout even have a hospital? She hadn’t seen one. She clutched the ladder with all her might, but her hands were growing slippery with sweat and she could feel Kip’s claws digging into her like knives.

  “Hold on!” Connor whispered. The ladder was hard to move from where he was, and heavy because of his sister and Kip. He tried lifting it up on one side, to rock them back into place, like lifting a table to keep a marble from rolling off it, but it wouldn’t move. He reached out to where the ladder left the tree and grabbed it there with both hands and pulled it so hard he felt himself starting to tip over. If this didn’t work, Cordelia and Kip would fall off the ladder and Connor would fall out of the tree. He squeezed his eyes closed and focused on pulling. His whole body felt hot with the effort of moving the ladder, but finally, he felt it tilt up and shake Cordelia back into a balanced position.

  Cordelia felt the ladder ram into her knee as she slid back into place. It was like falling down on the street. She grabbed the ladder as tightly as she could with both hands. Her knee suddenly burned with pain, but she was balanced again and holding tight to the ladder. Kip was just barely hanging on to her by his two front paws. Carefully, she reached out and lifted him back onto her back, where he let out a little sigh of relief. Taking a deep breath, Cordelia finished her climb across to the tree, where Connor still had his eyes closed. She laid her hand on his to let him know they were okay.

  “That was close,” she said quietly. Connor nodded, opening his eyes.

  They climbed down the tree. They peered over the wall but saw no one, so they climbed over it and ran across the street to an alley. They knew they had to be careful. People were looking for them. But they had to warn Nico before he got in trouble because of them.

  Chapter 21

  It was easy figuring out which way to go—they just had to head downhill. But they were afraid of being found, so they went slowly, carefully, sticking to shadowy alleys and poking their heads around corners before walking out into the street. They stayed far away from the river, and instead walked down the edge of the cliff, where buildings stopped suddenly because the ground stopped. There was no fence, no wall, just a drop right at the edge of the cliff, and the children were careful not to get too close to it.

  Luckily, not many people seemed to be out. They were all still at the river, maybe, or surrounding Aunt Marigold’s house. The children’s throats went dry when they thought about that, about Aunt Marigold and the trouble she might be in because of them.

  They made it to the base of the cliff after a while, and they felt safer there. They weren’t in town anymore. No one would be looking for them here.

  “There’s the train station,” Connor said, pointing. “So I’d guess the greenhouses are just beyond it?”

  “So let’s go,” Cordelia said. And they headed down the road, Kip walking beside them.

  It was noon when they got to the greenhouses. It had been a long walk. But they weren’t tired, because when they saw the greenhouses, they were filled with excitement. Nico hadn’t really described them well. He’d just called them greenhouses, but they were more like greenmansions. And so many of them! Palaces made of glass, all filled with green, and glowing like gems in the light. They were close together, with little roads between them, and each of them was shaped differently—this one was a pyramid, that one was a rectangle, and that one looked like the Taj Mahal. It was like a city of crystal. Cordelia immediately began taking photos.

  “But how will we find him?” Cordelia asked, her heart sinking.

  “I don’t know,” Connor said.

  “Nico!” Cordelia shouted. But there was no response.

  “We’ll have to check each one,” Connor said, looking at the clock on his smartphone. He wondered how long the mob would bother Aunt Marigold, and if they’d eventually leave her alone or storm the house.

  “Let’s start with this one,” Cordelia said, pointing at the one shaped like a dome. Connor nodded, and together they went inside.

  The inside of the greenhouse was muggy and hot. The children felt their clothes start to stick to them right away. But it was also beautiful. It was shaped like a circle, and in the circle were rings of raised plant beds, filled with soil and green leafy plants. Above them on the ceiling were sprinklers that sent down a fine mist. But all of this was nothing next to the robots.

  There were three of them. They were hanging from the ceiling by wires, and there were tracks on the ceiling so they could move around. They were spheres, each with arms coming down and a basket hanging underneath, like hot-air balloons. In fact, they resembled hot-air balloons more than they did robots. As the children watched, the robots floated around the room, picking the vegetables—carrots, the children could see once they’d been plucked—from the soil and putting them in their baskets.

  Then, one of the arms would retract inside the sphere and come back out a moment later, holding a seedling. This it would plant where it had just picked the vegetable. It would gently pat the seedling down, sprinkle some soil over it and water it, and then it would move on to the next.

  “Amazing,” Connor said. “It’s practically self-sustaining. I guess Nico’s family runs this whole place with just these robots.”

  “Who are you?” came an electronic-sounding voice from the air. The children looked around and saw there was a camera in each of the robots, too. Both robots had stopped what they were doing and were now staring at the children.

  “Um, we’re looking for Nico,” Connor said.

  “That’s not what I asked,” said the voice. It sounded female, despite being electronic and staticky. And it wasn’t actually coming from the robots. Connor and Cordelia looked around quickly and spotted a speaker just above the glass doors they’d come through.

  “I’m Cordelia,” Cordelia said to the speaker, “and this is my brother, Connor. We met Nico in the park two days ago and it’s very important we find him. Do you know where he is?”

  “Better come see me,” the voice said. “I’m in the central building.”

  “Okay,” Connor said.

  “So get going,” the voice said. “These machines have work to do, and I’m afraid that capybara’s fur is
going to clog the filters.”

  The children left the greenhouse the same way they’d come in, and looked around at the village of greenhouses for a central building. But all they could see were more greenhouses.

  “Well, it has to be in the center, right?” Connor said, and walked forward.

  “Whoever she is,” Cordelia said as they walked toward the center of the greenhouses, “she knew what a capybara was.”

  “Yeah,” Connor said. They walked for a while, passing by more and more greenhouses. Some had flowers growing in them; some had trees; some had big, prickly bushes. They all had robots.

  “Look,” Cordelia said, pressing her face to the glass of the greenhouse with the prickle bushes. “It’s picking pineapples.” These robots were bigger than the others, and their huge arms easily plucked the pineapples from the center of the bushes and put them in the giant baskets. “They must grow everything here.”

  “I think I see the central building,” Connor said, pointing. Compared to the greenhouses, it didn’t look very important—except that it was the only building that wasn’t a greenhouse. It was a plain, one-story house with a white picket fence around it. It was painted a light blue and had a gray roof.

  “It’s certainly something,” Cordelia said, disappointed. She thought the central building would be a giant tower of glass. The children approached the house and went through the gate. There was a welcome mat, which they wiped their feet on, and a doorbell, which they rang.

  “Come in!” said a voice from inside. The children opened the door. The inside was very plain, with wood floors and white walls. On a small table to the side was a collection of random objects: a pocket watch, a hat with a veil, a wicker basket, and a statue of a winged hippo that looked as if it had once been on a building.