Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls Part 9

"Betwixt!" Between exclaims. "You're overdoing it."

"He did say it, didn't he?" Betwixt challenges.

"Well, yeah, but he was a jerk."

"So, let me finis.h.!.+" His red eyes gleaming, Betwixt continues, "The rookie tosses us a few times, 'Hollow body,' he muses, flipping open his switchblade, 'Drugs?' The point was right at our belly when Chen came in and told him in no uncertain words that he could be accused of tampering with evidence if he wasn't careful."

"When she left," Between cuts in, "Martinez decided to heal his ego by telling another cop who wandered in how we got caught. Seems Abalone accidentally used the VIN number from a car that had been stolen. I guess when she scanned for a likely number it was neither on file as in use or as stolen. When we went driving by, eager rookie Martinez ran our number as practice and nearly lost it when he hit the jackpot."

I giggle and Abalone looks at me. She clearly is feeling guilty at putting me in danger. I wish I could tell her what Betwixt and Between have told me, but the knowledge is walled in my throat.

I settle for hugging her. "True luck consists not in holding the best cards at the table: luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home."

She smiles ruefully. "You think I pushed my luck, Sarah? Took that bucket to the well one too many times?"

I shrug, motioning to indicate that we are free. "The net of law is spread so wide, no sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong, they take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery! Big fishes alone escape from thee!"

Abalone squeezes me. "You're right, Sarah. Don't worry about the rent. I've enough socked by for now. I'll let this scam die for now-it's a big city."

When we get home, Professor Isabella is nervously waiting. Abalone fills her in as we sit in the kitchen drinking thick, strong hot chocolate.

"I'm glad you got her out," Professor Isabella sighs. "Clever of you to reprogram the station's computer before going in so certain icons would trigger rather extraordinary results. You really are a wizard."

"The best part," Abalone admits, her good humor returning, "was that I'd reconfigured some of the standard commands I knew they use to try and stop what I'd done. So when they tried to turn off the sprinkler system, it poured harder and when they tried to override the lights, they triggered other stuff that made it even harder for them."

She sips her cocoa. "I think most of Sarah's records were wiped. She says she got my message and didn't tell the secretary anything. I made sure her photos and prints were wiped. We couldn't salvage the fake IDs but that'll be minimal help."

"If they even try and track her," Professor Isabella agrees. "The case is minor enough and they still can return the stolen goods. What I want to know is how Sarah got out of the secretary room."

"Yeah, those things are impossible unless you know the code. Maybe I accidentally tripped it by freaking out their computer system," Abalone sounds unconvinced.

I consider trying to explain and give up almost before I begin. "Walls have ears."

They look at me and then sigh. I smile and shrug, palms held upward, but when I go to bed that night, a happy little voice sings, "I got a secret."

Eight.

FEBRUARY IS ICY AND UGLY. OFTEN WHEN P PROFESSOR I ISABELLA and I go to a museum (I have learned that there are more than one-I had believed that the one was vast enough to hold everything), Abalone insists that we take a cab or rent a car. and I go to a museum (I have learned that there are more than one-I had believed that the one was vast enough to hold everything), Abalone insists that we take a cab or rent a car.

She confesses shamefaced that she is doing legit freelance programming work. However, she hastens to add that all her ID is forged and the names are tags. I am curious why she is so secretive about her ident.i.ty. Even Professor Isabella and I only know her by an alias.

The help Peep and Chocolate gave us has reopened our grapevine to the Jungle. They never meet us at our apartment, nor do we go to the Jungle. I wonder if Abalone misses Head Wolf as much as I do. She must, but she never shows it.

Sometimes we will cruise in a rented car with tinted windows by the corner where the little wolves strut in their tights or second skin trousers. Under the watchful eyes of the Four, we'll buy a night of the boys' time. Then the two Tail Wolves become little boys for a night.

"We can't do it too often," Abalone cautions one night when I start weeping after dropping the boys off. "We can't make them soft. They've got to stay fierce, keep their pride. Otherwise, when some h.o.r.n.y old creep comes after them, they'll forget that they're doing this because they're of the Pack. Then they'll cry or forget to smile..."

She lets herself trail off. To mollify me, Professor Isabella suggests that we make certain that the boys meet Jerome and learn the location of When I Was Hungry. I agree, eager to see Jerome again.

Soon after this, Abalone comes home ashen-faced and shaking harder than the frigid day could account for. Without pausing to remove her wrap, she drops something into my lap, then into Professor Isabella's.

I look down wonderingly at the picture of a girl with cream-colored hair and jade green eyes. She is something like me, I think.

"Brighton Rock!" Professor Isabella reads. "'Spot our Girl and Win!' Why it's a candy ad! But what is Sarah doing on the advertis.e.m.e.nt? It can't be a coincidence!"

Abalone hangs up her cape and pours herself tea before plopping down on the floor.

"I don't believe in coincidence-not where Sarah's concerned." She turns a card over. "Listen: 'Creamy outside, tart lime inside.' That's just an excuse for using Sarah's face on these cards."

"I see." Professor Isabella carefully bookmarks the volume of Don Quixote Don Quixote that she's been reading to me. "Where did you get these?" that she's been reading to me. "Where did you get these?"

"I had work up near that police station where Sarah and I had our mishap. I don't know what made me pick the card out of the gutter, but when I did I recognized Sarah right off. I snooped around a bit then and discovered that they've been handed out since about a week after our sc.r.a.pe. Lots of people are hot on them-wait for new cards with clues and stuff. Heck, they're even buying the candy to get the cards."

"And if you spot the girl," Professor Isabella muses, shaking her head, "you get a prize. Why, they've turned the entire City into a means for finding Sarah."

"I'm sure of it," Abalone agrees. "I did some scouting. The places where these are being handed out most thickly are near our police station and around the Home and the Jungle, our hunting grounds."

"Not here," Professor Isabella asks worriedly.

"No. Apparently you two have been careful enough with your trips. Won't last. Someone at some museum will remember the weird, pretty girl with the dragon who stands muttering at walls. They'll a.s.sume that the fruitcake bit is meant to get attention."

I arch an eyebrow at her. "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the best of men."

"Sorry, Sarah." Abalone has the grace to blush. "I only mean how you seem to people who don't know how much sense you have under all that hair."

Mollified, I reply, "We be of one blood, ye and I."

Abalone presses her lips together. "That's what's so bad about this, Sarah. Not even the Master Words will protect you-even from your own Pack. Remember, Mowgli was nearly sold out by his own Pack members because they were just young and thought with their bellies and not with their hearts."

"Baloo," I say, pointing to her, then to Professor Isabella. "Akela."

"That's right, dear." Professor Isabella laughs. "Your teacher bear and your old, grey wolf. I wonder if Head Wolf..."

She stops as Abalone glowers at her. There is a sick silence. Then Abalone speaks, her words clipped and as cold as if to a stranger.

"Only the foolish turned against Mowgli."

"I'm sorry, Abalone. I forget myself."

"Don't."

Although Abalone and Professor Isabella would have been happiest keeping me inside the apartment full-time, they rapidly learn that this is impossible. Recordings, visual and audio alike, do not hold my attention unless someone else watches with me. I cannot read or write and sewing occupies me only so long.

Professor Isabella reads to me, but when she becomes weary and her attention wanders so does mine. Abalone gives me lessons, but after a certain point I am unable to concentrate on the little icons, no matter what pictures or sounds she programs as my reward.

I a.s.sign myself the task of keeping the apartment clean, but these ch.o.r.es rarely take more than two hours. In the end, Betwixt and Between watch out the window with me or I talk to the old stone walls of the building. They are somewhat more responsive than the wall in the police station, but often I must ask many questions to get a response. The furniture is impossible.

I find that talking to the walls or to Betwixt and Between for too long worries Professor Isabella. Soon, ashamed at myself, I feign emotionally charged conversations in order to get her to take me outside.

Abalone always disguises me. She has ruled out dyeing my hair, preferring the variety of her wig collection. My eyes are hidden by contact lenses or sungla.s.ses, my features by cosmetics. Professor Isabella also has a few disguises and chuckles about playing "dress up" at her age.

The computer door guard doesn't care how we look as long as finger and retina prints match what is filed.

Meanwhile, Abalone is tracking down Ivy Green Inst.i.tute. Often she is frustrated by dead end after dead end.

We persevere in this fas.h.i.+on for some time. Tracing the Brighton Rock candy campaign, we note that venders in the now ominous cream and jade are being posted at museums. Professor Isabella decides that we should avoid these even in disguise and takes me to concerts, plays, and zoos.

How well I follow concerts varies widely. Often I end up listening to the Hall rather than the music. Plays delight me, however, especially old friends like Shakespeare and Shaw, whose words, like the Bible's, I think of as my own.

Zoos are a problem. I have not been much around animals. They were forbidden in the Home and the pets of the Free People tended to stay near their handlers. However, my timidity is not an excuse; Professor Isabella is determined to educate me about animals in more than theory.

We go and look at the caged creatures and I finally see wolves, bears, panthers, and owls in the fur. Professor Isabella must explain that there are no dragons like Betwixt and Between in zoos, but she shows me lizards and snakes. My dragons amuse themselves by making snide comments at the expense of their unicameral kinfolk.

These visits continue until I lose some of my fear. Then she takes me to the Petting Zoo, where there are animals to touch. Visit after visit, I refuse to do more than quickly pat a silken nose or hastily feed food pellets to an eager goat or llama.

Finally, however, I consent to make friends with the guinea pigs, starting by feeding one or another from the far side of a carrot or string bean and proudly progressing to the day I actually hold a stout black-and-white boar with whorls like flowers in his fur.

We come home to tell Abalone, full of triumph.

"Sarah actually held a guinea pig today," Professor Isabella announces almost before we are in the door.

"If thine enemy hunger, feed him," I offer, thinking how less sharp the teeth looked when chewing on a carrot.

"You held a guinea pig and fed it?" Abalone asks.

I nod happily.

"Great," Abalone is clearly impressed. "Not bad at all. Oh, by the way, I located Ivy Green Inst.i.tute today, even cracked some of the files."

"Not bad." Professor Isabella smiles and winks at me.

I smile, but I am not certain that I am ready to learn more. What I have discovered has hardly made me happy. Still, even as I am trying to shape the protest, Abalone is beginning to pull files up from her tappety-tap's memory.

"Sarah. There's a birth date here and a description." She drums the table. "This next is what gets me-no parents are listed but there is a brother, Dylan, and a sister, Eleanora."

Dylan. Pale of hair. Eyes almost without color. Dylan. Brother.

I shudder. Betwixt and Between call for me from my bag. I grasp toward them, but the room is spinning, the floor coming to meet my head. My hands are too slow to catch me.

When I awake, I am on a sofa in the living room. Betwixt and Between are propped near me. Four ruby eyes are bright with tears.

I reach and brush away the tears. Funny how in all the time Betwixt and Between have been with me, I never learned until now that dragons purr.

I am scratching the dragons under their chins when Abalone comes in, a beer in one hand, her tappety-tap in the other. Seeing me awake, she crows with delight and slides to her knees by the sofa.

"How y'doing, Sarah? Feel better?"

"I was thirsty and you gave me drink," I hint.

Grinning, she hands me the beer can. It is almost full and I must sit up so as not to dribble on myself. Refreshed and feeling clearer-headed, I hand her back the can.

"Enough?"

"Drink deeply, but never too deep," I remind her.

"The Law-the Jungle-seems so far away," she muses. "Not real. Dozens of kids living strung up and strung out in a big tin can. Weird. I kind of miss it."

"Sarah's awake?" Professor Isabella comes from her room, a book in one hand. "I'm delighted. I suspect all the new things today have been enough to unsettle her."

"I'm not sure," Abalone says, sucking on her beer. "She took to the Jungle easy enough and you've been teaching her gently enough. No, she seemed to flip when I mentioned Dylan."

"Yes," Professor Isabella nods. "We've both been suspicious that our girl knows more than she can tell us. You may be triggering some painful memories."

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought," I add, "I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, and with old woes new wail my dear time's waste."

"Still," Abalone says, "whenever you're ready, Sarah, I think we need to review the rest of what I've found."

She picks up one of the "Brighton Rock" cards and turns it in her hands before speaking again.

"We know someone wants Sarah and, frankly, I don't understand all the psychobabble in her records. I can research, but it seems a waste of time with you two here."

Professor Isabella touches my forehead, softly, lightly. She pushes back my hair.

"There is no fever, Sarah. Are you strong enough to go on?"

"I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls," I state defiantly, and my dragons thrum approvingly.

"Okay, then." Abalone flips open the tappety-tap and Professor Isabella sits by my feet on the sofa.

Betwixt and Between are rea.s.suringly strong, but I remember their tears. I will learn, but I will not go away from them as Dylan did.

Abalone looks at me and I nod.

"Here we go then." She strokes my past up from her memory. "Like I said before you decided to crash your hard drive, Sarah, these records list a brother, Dylan, and a sister, Eleanora. When I get a feel for the Inst.i.tute's system, I'll try and learn more about what's with them."

"Wait," Professor Isabella asks. "You said the Inst.i.tute's system. I'd a.s.sumed that it was defunct-no more."

"Me, too," Abalone says, "but I think 'gone underground' would be a more accurate description. The Ivy Green Inst.i.tute is still out there and I suspect that it wants Sarah back."

I shudder, flashes of memory surfacing. Rolling hills, manicured lawns, all seen only through windows. I am small, but if I pull over a stool, I can see. Sometimes Dylan watches with me, his dragon close at hand.

"She's getting white again." I hear Professor Isabella's voice as from a distance. "Give me that!"