17

Marisol

THE ARAL SEA WAS STILL MONSTERLESS.

Marisol sat by its shore, trying not to worry as the sun sank low, lower, lowest. Amelia’s emergency clouds had scattered, so the sky and its mirror were both smooth, except where Hazel kept leaning in to see her own reflection.

“Hello!” Marisol’s heart skipped every time the woman greeted herself. “Hello there!”

She looked back over her shoulder at the St. Helena olive tree. Jake and Christopher still hadn’t arrived and even though they hadn’t set a firm time, the Crystal Palace was on fire again—catching the sunset and spitting rays back. Ember orange everywhere. It felt so close. It felt too late.

Her hourglass had lost a single grain of sand.

Marisol held the timepiece between her fingers, counting the missing memory over and over. What if Jake had gotten caught? What if all their plans fell through? What if Hazel never really learned her name? What if they never got to go home? Victor would probably love being an only child. . . .

Each thought made Marisol squeeze tighter, until her fist ached. Until she realized that this was the bad kind of holding on . . . The kind that kept her from being alive, enjoying a gorgeous sunset by a lost sea in a world with just enough magic to make happy endings possible.

Just as she slipped her necklace back into her shirt, four silhouettes appeared. Sharp black, clean cut. Against the neon sky they were all elbows and shoulders and one very happy tail.

“Hey there!” The accent was unmistakably Amelia’s. “Look who I found trotting down the Via Hadriana! Well, walking really. Those poor quaggas were running out of steam. . . .”

“Jake!” Marisol dashed toward her cousin. “¡Estás bien!”

His hug smelled like sand and old books. “¡Sí! I’m okay! It looks like you are too.” He sounded relieved. “Did you have any trouble getting the ledger?”

Um . . .

At the sight of the newcomers, Hazel had stopped splashing. She wore her pleasant poppy smile as Christopher waded into the water, arms stretched for an embrace.

“Hazel! My love!”

“Hello!” The nurse held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

A heartbroken look stole over their great-uncle’s face. It knew just where to fit—right around the chin dimple, clinging to his golden eyelashes. This wasn’t the first time Christopher had worn such sadness.

Hopefully, though, it would be the last.

“We had a few close calls, but we got Christopher’s ledger,” she told her cousin. “Did you guys grab the hourglasses?”

Jake grinned and began pulling out much larger versions of the charms around their necks. One at a time, he set them on the ground, making sure the name plaques read upside down:

Gravity got to work.

Sand started to sift. Memories began to return.

“Oh!” Hers was from Nana’s last visit to Bolivia—they’d eaten picana at midnight on Christmas Eve, letting the spicy chicken, beef, and corn simmer on their tongues while they sang carols.

“The bonfire!” Jake exclaimed at the same time; his face lighting up with memories of the flames. “You’re right, Mari! I wrote Nana a letter on that lantern and let it float up to the stars—I can’t believe I forgot!”

Marisol wanted to cry—happy tears, as well as sad—when she looked back at the couple standing in the sea. Their reflections rippled, not quite meeting, as Hazel kept trying to introduce herself.

“Hello! My name is Hazel Susan Clive—” She gasped, hands clasping over her mouth. Her eyes widened. Fuller. “I—I remember my name!”

“Haven’t we told her like twelve times?” Amelia wondered.

Christopher stood, waiting.

Hazel’s eyelashes fluttered, her stare getting more and more crowded. It was like seeing someone’s soul poured back into their body. Thought by thought. Story by story. Until . . .

“Christopher?” It dawned on her face and in her voice. “Oh my stars and garters! Christopher Jacob Creaturo!!! You found me!”

“Hazel . . .” was all he could say.

She threw herself into Christopher’s open arms. They spun together in the water. Their joy was almost too pure to look at, brighter than the burned-out stars in the sky above. When they kissed, Marisol knew that everything—even giving up the Great Mogul Diamond—had been worth it.

Jake made an ew face. Amelia clapped. Oz gave a husky, triumphant bark, which then turned into something of a growl. . . . The thylacine’s hackles rose as his snout pointed back at the olive tree.

Leaning against its trunk was a Curator.

Marisol felt every season at once—summer heat, ice in her veins, the dread of lengthening nights—before she realized that it wasn’t just any old official. It was Min-jun. There was a frown on his normally kind face, but that might’ve been to keep the monocle set in his eye.

“Ah!” Jake yelled. Then, seeing past the glass. “Oh!”

“Hola, Min-jun.”

“Hola, Marisol. Hello, Jake.” He pushed himself off the tree, scanning through the scene through his monocle. “What creatures of habit you are! Not only did you return to the scene of the crime to commit the same crime, but you repeated your rendezvous too!”

“You didn’t tell the others, did you?” There were no more silhouettes on the horizon, but Marisol had to be sure.

“And risk my perfect rating?” Min-jun shook his head. “No. But I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time before they show up. They’re still very upset. You’ve made a terrible mess of things.” He stared straight at Christopher. “Cracks everywhere! Fissures forever!”

Hazel frowned. “Cracks? What cracks? Christopher, what did you do?”

“I broke the world for you,” he answered softly. “But don’t worry, love. We’re going to fix everything and return home, where we can keep our memories.”

The Curator’s gaze flitted from the reversed hourglasses to Hazel. No doubt he was seeing how much more of her there was now. “Sometimes Curators get too carried away with cataloging. The memory repository isn’t a very fair system, is it?”

Marisol and Jake answered at the same time. “No!”

“People need their memories, even the painful ones,” her primo went on. “It’s what makes them them. If Amelia forgot how to fly, she’d still be Amelia Earhart, but she wouldn’t be the Amelia Earhart anymore, would she?”

The pilot scuffed some sand with her boot. “Huh. I hadn’t thought about it like that before.”

“Me neither,” Min-jun admitted.

“I don’t want to forget how to fly! I can’t! Then I’d have to walk everywhere or . . . or . . . sail!” Amelia looked flustered—curls licked out from under her cap. Her shoulders hunched.

Marisol peeled off the borrowed jacket and handed it back to their friend. “Don’t worry. You’re the Amelia Earhart. No one in my world is forgetting you any time soon. I know I won’t.”

“Thanks, pal!” she sniffed.

“You could also file a complaint with the Administrator,” Min-jun suggested. “Though he’ll be more amenable to changes once the worlds aren’t in danger of ending.”

“I think it might be a stretch, even then,” Jake said with a guilty sort of look.

“In that case . . . I’ll have to think about it,” Min-jun said quietly.

“You and me both,” Amelia added.

Marisol cleared her throat. “Speaking of the end of the world . . .”

The page filled with Christopher Creaturo’s illegal entries was still in her pocket. She handed it to her great-uncle, careful not to let it fall into the water. Christopher stepped out of the Aral Sea, hand in hand with Hazel, and even though he had to let go to pull out his ballpoint pen, their shoulders kept touching.

“Here,” Min-jun offered up the fountain pen from his necklace. “You’d better use this one.”

“Are they charmed to do something special?” Marisol wondered.

“They make anyone’s handwriting legible. Nothing is worse than a form you can’t read! I mean, except for the collapse of the Unknown,” Min-jun admitted. “And eternal amnesia.”

“I’d like to use it next, to fill out a complaint card,” Amelia said.

But there was a lot to rewrite first. Christopher scrawled a new monster’s name beneath the kraken—and suddenly Nessie was back in her twilight sea, swirling the last dregs of sunset with her fins.

“What about the building in London?” Jake reminded their great-uncle.

“The ones destroyed during the Blitz, yes . . .” A scribble. “There. They should be back in the World Between Blinks now.”

“And the Amber Room!” Marisol added. After all, it wasn’t Nefertiti’s fault that Marisol had ditched their reward.

“Done! You see!” Christopher returned the pen and page to Min-jun. “It’s all fixed! Everything’s back where it should be.”

“Except for us,” said Jake.

The monocle was in Min-jun’s eye again. He squinted at the entries, then out toward the Loch Ness Monster, who was celebrating her return with underwater cartwheels. “It looks satisfactory, but I’m afraid I need a stamp of approval to cross out entries. Especially ones from the 1940s, as yours are.”

Even though Min-jun was a helpful Curator, he was still a Curator, and for a moment, it seemed red tape would keep Christopher, Hazel, and the cousins tied here anyway.

Then Amelia stepped forward.

“Well, I don’t need a stamp!” she declared. “These kids deserve to go home, by golly! So do the lovebirds.”

Min-jun didn’t stop her from taking the stationery. He didn’t stop her from opening the other ledgers either. All four names sat out on display, waiting for the strikethrough.

This was it.

Time to say goodbye.

They thanked Min-jun for not tattling on them. They hugged Amelia, then Hazel, then Christopher, who promised that they’d meet again on the other side of the Unknown. The hardest farewell was the one Marisol couldn’t say.

Oz sat on his hind legs—same as he had at the Frost Fair, when he first came snapping for their gingerbread. His ears lay flat, and there was a sad, sad whimper behind his teeth.

“I wish we could take you with us, Oz.” She laughed at the thought of bringing an extinct animal back to the beach house. Look, Mom and Dad! Can we keep him? ¿Por favor? I promise I’ll pick up his poop!

“Me too.” Jake knelt down to hug the thylacine.

“Ah-ah!”

Marisol joined the huddle. “Thank you for being the best Tasmanian tiger I’ve ever met,” she said, her voice thick.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Oz licked them so hard their eyelashes stuck to their eyelids. “Ah!”

Min-jun cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to rush, but I think my colleagues will be here soon.” Sure enough, there was a long, pale line of suits marching out of the city; clipboards ready to categorize Nessie’s reappearance. “It might be best if you start disappearing!”

“On it!” Amelia flourished the fountain pen like a wand. “Don’t worry, Oz and I will stick together! Goodbye, Hazel Clive! Goodbye, Christopher Creaturo!”

It was strange, watching someone vanish without smoke or a sound effect. Not even a poof! The lovebirds were just there and gone, between blinks. Back to . . . somewhere.

“Where will the Unknown send us?” Marisol reached for Jake’s hand. “Back to the lighthouse?”

Min-jun paused. Considering. “I think you’ll find yourselves exactly where you’re supposed to be. The opposite of lost.”

Her cousin disappeared, and Marisol was holding just air, just air. In the distance she could hear the Curators squabbling about whether to use Form 1091a or Form 1091b for the Loch Ness Monster’s reprocessing. Hopefully Min-jun and Amelia wouldn’t get in too much trouble.

“Bye, kiddo!” The famous pilot winked at her. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

The pen struck.

Marisol loved the air around the ocean.

At night, in the summer, it almost felt like perfume. Or a lullaby, depending on how chatty the cicadas were. Tonight, the critters gave those extinct Amazon insects a run for their money. Welcome back! they screamed out of the marsh. You have some explaining to do!

She and Jake stood at the end of Nana’s dock—no boat, no excuses. Good thing they didn’t need either of those things right away. The backyard sat empty. Lawn chairs yawned at shadows and the grill had that lumpy black smell that meant it hadn’t been used since the last thunderstorm.

“Where is everybody?” Jake wondered.

“Out looking for us.” There were two cars in the driveway, and a light shining through the kitchen window. “We’ve been missing for three days!”

“Oh, yeah. . . .”

Neither cousin moved. Marisol kept staring at the house—realizing just how many shingles peeled off at the gable. It did need a lot of work. She hadn’t seen it before.

The constellations above made shapes she recognized. Treasure chest jewels: twinkling and twinkling. “I wonder where Hazel and Christopher ended up.”

“France, maybe?”

“I hope they’re together.”

“Me too.”

“I already miss Oz.”

“Me too.” Jake’s face looked softer in the moonlight. And . . . was that a tear shining by his eyelash? Marisol reached out and grabbed her primo’s hand again.

“What are we going to tell our family?” she asked.

“The truth, I guess.”

“Sorry, we got sucked into a world where everything lost ends up and we couldn’t get back until we tracked down an evil villain who turned out not to be very evil at all but our great-uncle Christopher Creaturo, although we wouldn’t have caught him without the help of our new best friend Amelia Earhart and a Tasmanian tiger named Oz.” Marisol paused for a breath. “Also, did you know that T-rexes hate the smell of peppermint?”

Really? the cicadas chirped back.

Jake couldn’t help but grin. “Maybe not the whole truth. We’ll tell them our boat got swept away and we were trapped inside the lighthouse. Which is technically what happened.”

“I’ll let you do the talking,” Marisol decided. “Are you ready?”

Another light had switched on inside. And another, on the back porch.

“I think so.” He swallowed. “You?”

“Whatever’s waiting for us in there can’t be any scarier than a megalodon. Or cannibal rats. Or a Titanoboa. Or Red Bun. Or the Administrator.”

In fact, it was Victor who stepped out onto the porch. The floodlights slanted so his hair looked like kraken tentacles. He paused at the top step, trying to decide whether or not he was imagining the figures at the end of the dock.

“Mari? Jake?” Blink, blink. “Mari! Jake!” He came hurtling down the steps to throw his arms around Marisol, lifting her clean off her feet. She squeaked a protest, then went silent as he squished all the air out of her, his arms a warm, strong band around her body. “We were so scared, we . . .”

But then Victor seemed to remember that he was too mature for hugs like this, and he set her down on her feet, clearing his throat.

“We’re back,” Jake supplied helpfully, pushing his hands deep into his pockets.

“You two are in sooooo much trouble,” Victor said, then tipped his head back to raise his voice to a shout. “Moooooom!!! I found them!!!”

More lights flicked on. The creaky old beach house announced every relative’s footstep. Marisol heard their names shouted and sobbed. The twins—Veronica and Angeline—even put away their “eye phones” to join in. As the rest of the stampede descended, she hugged her grumbling brother one more time. Tighter than tight.

It was good to be home.