Teamwork
“I’ll bet if I had another book from the library,” said Angus, “the house would come back.”
“But you don’t,” said Celia. “Otto Bodkin saw to that.”
“Why doesn’t Baz do another magic trick?” said Angus.
“I don’t think Houdini ever unburned down a house,” said Sebastian.
“I guess we could try what we did last time,” said Angus.
“Yeah, but like you said, you don’t have a book that the house wants,” said Celia.
“Yeah,” said Juliet. “Plus, how is Celia supposed to pull Sebastian onto a balcony and how is he supposed to pick the lock on a door when the balcony and the door aren’t even there?” said Juliet.
“I didn’t mean to do all that,” said Angus. “I meant we just walk through the front door. This time Sebastian doesn’t need to unlock it from the inside.”
“Yes,” said Juliet, “because it’s not there!”
“I know it’s not there,” said Angus testily. “I’m not an idiot.”
“But you said …”
“What I’m trying to say, if you’ll just listen to me, is that we walk into the house where the front door was.”
“What good is that going to do us?” said Juliet. “We’ll just be standing in a pile of rubble.”
“OK, you two, stop fighting,” said Celia.
“We’re not fighting,” said Angus, suddenly calmer. He winked at Juliet with a slight smile and added, “We’re just having an intense set of negotiations.”
Juliet relaxed and stifled a giggle. “Right.”
“OK,” said Celia, “Angus thinks we should act like mimes and pretend to walk through a front door that isn’t there. Anybody else got an idea?”
“Sebastian are you sure you can’t think of a magic trick that would help us?” said Juliet.
“Most of Houdini’s tricks were escapes,” said Sebastian. “He did walk through a wall, but this house doesn’t have any walls to walk through.”
“Juliet, any ideas?” said Celia.
“I got nothing,” said Juliet
“Then I guess we go through the door,” said Celia. She made air quotes with her fingers when she said the word door.
“Can we even be sure where it is … or where it was?” said Juliet.
“I think it was about here,” said Angus, standing in front of the ruins of the house. “I mean, I saw it just a minute ago.”
“What do we do?” said Sebastian. “Just step through?”
“Maybe Baz should wave his wand or something,” said Angus.
“Should we hold hands?” said Celia.
“Oh, come on,” said Juliet. “If we’re going in, let’s stop talking about it and go.” She stepped into the charred remains of the house and vanished.
“You see,” said Angus. “Magic house.”
“Juliet!” cried Celia. “Where did she go?”
“She went inside,” said Angus, excitedly, and he too stepped across the threshold and disappeared.
“Wait for me,” said Sebastian, smiling. In another second he was gone, and Celia followed quickly behind him.
The children stood in a space roughly the same size and shape as the entrance hall three of them had seen two days earlier, only this time the walls and floor were black with soot. Overhead, there was no ceiling, just the moonlight and the night sky. Charred timbers were scattered across the floor and vines grew on the walls.
“It’s still a burned house,” said Celia.
“Yeah,” said Sebastian, “but the walls are a lot taller. It looks like this house burned maybe ten or twenty years ago. The house we were just outside of burned in 1932.”
“It just proves what I said,” said Juliet. “The magic is getting weaker. The first time it took us back to the house the way it was a hundred years ago. Now it’s only eighty or so.”
“Great,” said Angus glumly. “If the house burned twenty years ago, then the library will be gone. Either vanished by the spells of Theosophus or destroyed in the fire.”
“Do you smell something?” said Celia.
“What?” said Angus.
“Follow me,” said his sister, and she opened what was left of a door and stepped into the next room. “Smells like smoke in here.”
While the next room was much like the entrance hall—burned beyond recognition and open to the elements, it felt different.
“No vines on the walls,” said Sebastian.
“I think the house is getting younger,” said Angus.
“What do you mean?” said Celia.
“Outside it was over eighty years since the fire,” said Angus. “In the entrance hall maybe twenty years. This room looks like it burned pretty recently. Let’s keep going. Maybe by the time we get to the library the house will be back to its old self.” He dashed across the room toward a closed door.
“Angus! Wait!” cried Celia. But it was too late. Angus passed through the door and disappeared. The door stood open, but the children could see only darkness on the other side.
“What if that room is on fire?” said Celia.
“Come on,” said Sebastian. “We’ve got to help him.” He and Celia made a dash for the open doorway. Juliet hesitated just a moment. Fire scared her more than anything else. It always had. But then, being alone in a burned, magical house didn’t sound like much fun either. She stood by the doorway where the others had disappeared for a second, then took a deep breath and walked through.
She emerged into a room filled with smoke. It looked like the fire was mostly out—she could glimpse burned furniture and paint peeling from the walls, but no flames. Still the room was hot, and she could hear the others coughing.
“Where are you?” she cried, the smoke stinging her eyes. She held out her hands, feeling for the others.
“Ow,” said Celia. “That was my eye.”
“Sorry,” said Juliet. She felt Celia’s shoulder and then found her hand, which she grasped tightly.
“Pull your shirt over your mouth,” said Angus from across the room. “And come toward me. I’ve found the door.”
In another moment the four children stood coughing and wheezing, shirts pulled over their faces, barely visible to each other as they huddled by the door.
“Go through, go through!” said Juliet between coughs. She was beginning to panic, beginning to think this was all a horrible idea, that she was going to die in this place.
“There’s a problem,” said Angus.
“Is it locked?” said Sebastian.
“Worse,” said Angus. “It’s hot. Really hot.”
“Let’s go back,” said Juliet. “I can’t stay in here.” She felt beads of sweat trickling down her face and her heart raced as full panic set in. She tried to pull away from Celia, but Celia wouldn’t let her go.
“We can’t go back,” said Celia between coughs. “Smoke inhalation is what kills people in fires. We have to go through.”
“But we’ll burn,” cried Juliet, her knees weakening.
Celia slipped an arm around Juliet’s waist and held her up.
“I remember the next room,” said Angus. “All the furniture is against the walls and the door is directly across. Stay low and move fast. Now let’s go.”
He threw the door open and they felt a burst of heat. They had been fumbling in near darkness, but as they passed through the door, the intense light of the flames was just as blinding. But the worst part was the sound. The fire roared, making even shouted conversation among the children impossible.
Angus dropped to the floor and began crawling across the room as fast as he could. Sebastian followed. But Juliet froze just inside the doorway. From above her head she heard a rumbling sound, and then Celia yanked her to the floor and forward toward the center of the room. A second later there was a deafening crash and a shower of sparks as a burning timber crashed to the floor on the very spot Juliet had been standing.
Juliet was sobbing now, but Celia did not let go of her hand and the two crawled as fast as they could across the room. There seemed to be no air to breathe and they choked with heat and smoke. At first, they could see Sebastian’s feet in front of them, but after a few seconds they disappeared.
Juliet felt a paralyzing fear creeping over her body. And then she felt an even greater fear of that fear. What if it really did paralyze her? What if she couldn’t move forward any further? Would Celia leave her in the middle of the fire? Was Celia strong enough to drag her across the room? She felt her body slowing down, her muscles starting to ignore the signals from her brain, but then she heard a voice. Celia had cupped her hands against Juliet’s ears and was shouting so that Juliet could just understand the words.
“It’s OK. I’m with you,” she said. “We’ll get through this together.” The energy surged back into Juliet’s limbs and she lurched forward, gripping Celia’s hand harder than ever. They had only gone a short distance when they heard another rumbling above, this one much louder than the one that had preceded the falling timber. Suddenly Juliet could see everything that would happen over the next few seconds.
The entire ceiling of the room would collapse in a pile of flaming wood. She and Celia would be first crushed and then incinerated. She hoped the falling ceiling would knock her unconscious, because she didn’t want to know what it felt like to be burned alive. For a fleeting instant, she wondered if her parents would miss her. Would they even notice she was gone? Celia kept crawling, tugging on Juliet’s hand, but Juliet knew it was no use. They were not even halfway across the room, and she could tell by the sound that the ceiling would collapse in three … two …
And then everything stopped. The room was still hot, and the flames were still bright, but they did not move. They did not roar or crackle. It was like someone had pushed pause. From in front of them the girls heard Angus shouting, “Run! Run!” It was as if his voice came across the room and flowed straight into Juliet’s fear. Something about the way he called out gave her hope and strength.
And so, they ran. As Celia pulled her upright, Juliet’s limbs did not want to work. It felt like she was trying to run on legs made of rubber. She knew Celia could run much faster than she could. She could have easily left Juliet behind to save herself, but she didn’t. Celia stayed with Juliet, kept her supported with her arm, as they stumbled across the room.
Angus stood just inside the doorway, yelling at the girls to hurry. Beside him, Sebastian crouched in a strange position, his arm held out toward the ceiling. Juliet and Celia had almost reached the boys, and Juliet was just beginning to think they might survive this horror, when the sound of the fire returned, louder than ever. Juliet felt the movement of the flames closing in on her, the fire hotter and hotter as she and Celia flailed toward the doorway.
None of that mattered, though, because Juliet could also sense the ceiling falling. This time, though, she pushed down her fear with the memory of Angus’s voice. Celia had stayed with her, and Juliet told herself she was not going to be the reason Celia didn’t make it. She put on a burst of speed and the two girls hurtled into the boys, sending them all tumbling through the doorway propelled by the tremendous explosion of the burning ceiling crashing to the floor.
For a minute or two they all lay on the cool floor coughing, panting, and in Juliet’s case crying. She didn’t care if the others saw her. She was crying with relief and it felt good. Celia had saved her life and perhaps, with that last burst of speed, she had saved Celia’s.
Finally, Sebastian spoke. “That was an adventure.”
“If that was an adventure,” said Juliet, her pulse slowly returning to normal, “I’d rather not have another one.” This comment was met with no reply, until Angus began to laugh. For a second Juliet thought this enormously inappropriate, but then, for reasons she could not say, she joined him.
Soon all four children were laughing—lying on the floor of a magical house that shouldn’t be there and laughing. They had survived a room of fire and the only response seemed to be to laugh. Each time one of them would stop, they would look at the others and begin laughing again. It was several minutes before they quieted down.
“What happened?” said Celia at last. “Why did the fire pause like that?”
“Yeah,” said Juliet. “What did happen?”
“I heard the ceiling,” said Sebastian, “and I was afraid you two wouldn’t make it. I figured, why not try magic again? I stuck my wand out and yelled ‘STOP,’ because it was the only thing I could think of.”
“Yeah,” said Angus, “and we both believed that it would do some good.”
“And then I felt the house take over. I could feel the magic flowing from the house, through me, out the wand, and into the room. But the fire didn’t want to stop. It was like a tug of war, and the fire and the ceiling just kept pulling harder. I’m glad you sped up at the end, because I couldn’t hold it one more second.”
The children stood up and brushed some of the ashes off their clothes and out of their hair.
“Thank you, Sebastian,” said Juliet softly. “And thank you, Celia. And you too, Angus, for being our cheerleader there at the end. I wouldn’t have made it without all of you.”
“We’re a team,” said Celia, throwing an arm around Juliet’s shoulders.
“Yes,” said Juliet. “We’re a team.”