Because Murray was ill and likely to sleep fitfully, and because Susan and Charles were leaving the following day, Mrs. Oakenfeld put Murray in Susan’s room and had Susan bunk with Charles. And because Susan and Charles had reached a stalemate, neither of them opened the book that had been delivered that afternoon—whenever either child approached the oilskin package, the other would glare over fearfully. The final hurdle was whose suitcase to put the book in. Susan finally agreed to let Charles stow it in his backpack, but after he had she took the small lock from her keepsake box and snapped it on the zipper. The key she put on a necklace, which she tucked inside her shirt as Murray did with his locket.
“Your bag, my lock. Now we’re even.”
The next day was filled with preparations and goodbyes, and before they knew it they were in a taxi. Mr. Ramirez had stowed their bags in the trunk, including Charles’s backpack, so Susan and Charles couldn’t even examine the mysterious book on the way to the airport.
“Mr. Ramirez,” Susan said before they left, “I wonder if the boy who delivered that package yesterday said anything about it.”
Mr. Ramirez looked at Susan blankly. “I was sleeping in the afternoon,” he said, “but I think you’re the one who’s dreaming. You didn’t have any deliveries yesterday.”
Susan peered at Mr. Ramirez’s face. He certainly didn’t look like he was lying. But before she could quiz him further, Mrs. Oakenfeld ushered Susan and Charles into the taxi. She gave Susan money to pay the driver—she was staying home with Murray, and Mr. Oakenfeld had left much earlier on business. She complimented her children on their improved behavior and kissed them both one last time.
“Murray will be along in a week or two, when he’s better. Now, you two keep up the good work, and give Farley a hug for me.”
Three hours later, as the children’s Air Canada flight banked left over Long Island Sound and the FASTEN SEAT-BELTS sign went off, Charles was finally able to pull his backpack from the overhead compartment. Now the black nylon bag sat on his lap. Charles could feel a warmth on his thighs, a tingling from the object concealed within. All of a sudden he was nervous, so he said,
“I can’t believe you made the taxi driver take that dumb detour.”
“It wasn’t dumb,” Susan protested. “A little superstitious, maybe—”
“It was a tree. Dumb.”
Susan had to bite her lip to keep her mouth shut, because she didn’t really know how to explain her odd sidetrack. Earlier in the spring, she had been shopping downtown with her friends Dehlia Mitchell and Courtney King when they happened upon a tiny garden on the corner of Houston and Bowery. The postage stamp–sized park was dominated by a single enormous tree with delicate needlelike leaves and reddish feathery bark that Susan (to the consternation of her shopping-minded friends) simply had to touch. Apparently she wasn’t the only person to be lured in by the great tree: an informational placard mounted on a stake told her that the object of her fascination was a young redwood. While Dehlia and Courtney chatted about what they wanted at Urban Outfitters, Susan read that the trees were both the world’s tallest and oldest living things, capable of reaching heights of more than 350 feet and ages exceeding three thousand years.
“Um, Earth to Susan,” Charles said. “Sister Susan? Get your head out of the trees.” He tapped on the window. “It’s already in the clouds.”
Susan sniffed. “You should care about that tree more than I do. Its very existence is a scientific phenomenon.”
“It’s a tree.”
“Redwoods couldn’t grow in the Northeast until very recently. The winters were too long and harsh. But global warming has made it possible for them to survive here. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”
“What ever,” Charles said. He pointed to the bag in his lap. “I’m much more interested in what’s in here. Give me the key.”
Susan returned Charles’s stare with a thin-lipped smile. “Maybe we should wait till after lunch. We don’t want to spill anything on Mario’s book.”
“I’m sure we can manage,” Charles said dryly. “I was up all night wondering about it, and I heard you tossing and turning too. Come on, let’s—”
Charles broke off. His eyes narrowed to slits.
“You…forgot…the…key.” He said the words very slowly, as if willing Susan to contradict him. “Didn’t … you?”
“I didn’t forget it. I took it off when I was showering and—”
“YOU! FORGOT! THE! KEY!”
“Charles! Keep your voice down!”
“I will NOT keep my voice down! I am so tired of this, Susan Oakenfeld. Everyone thinks you’re the responsible one, just because you’re three years older and speak in a phony-baloney English accent. Mum gives you the scissors to cut the string, Mum gives you the money to pay the cabdriver. But YOU! RUIN! EVERYTHING!”
Charles’s voice was so loud that a flight attendant abandoned her trolley and marched toward them.
“Young man, I’m going to have to ask you to keep it down.”
Charles was normally a quiet boy. Even in science, where he was the top student, he blushed and stammered if he was called to speak out loud. But now he seemed completely fearless. Clutching the bag in his lap, he exclaimed, “See! Susan messes up, and I get in trouble! Fine! I won’t say anything else for the Whole! ENTIRE! FLIGHT!”
He was as good as his word. But the moment the two Oakenfeld children stepped onto the jetway in Quebec, his mouth flew open.
“So what are you going to do about this?”
Susan glanced to her left and right as theatrically as possible.
“Is someone speaking? I thought I heard a voice. Excuse me, sir,” she said, tapping a man on the elbow. “Did you say something?”
“Be serious!” Charles said, even as the man murmured something about “les Americaines” and hurried away. “How do you plan on opening this lock?”
“I don’t know why I—”
“Why?” Charles held up his backpack. “Because you were the one who locked it, and you were the one who forgot to bring the key.”
“I wouldn’t have had to lock it,” Susan said, “if I could trust you not to sneak a look at it and—and break it or something!”
“How do you break a book?”
“Well, you broke the lock on the drawing room door in Drift House last fall!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just thought that since you’re so good with breaking locks you could find a way to pick it or—”
Susan’s words—and her forward movement—were both halted abruptly when she ran into a pair of long, thin (and slightly smelly) legs. She looked up—and up, and up—to see a grizzled face glowering down at her.
“Picket what?” the incredibly distant face said. “Picket fences? Pick it up? Or pick-it a lock?”
“I’m s-s-sorry, sir. I didn’t see you.”
The man stared down at Susan for an uncomfortable moment, then nodded. He was bald on top but had long stringy gray hair fringing his ears and straggling past his shoulders.
“Yup. Too busy arguing with Charlie-o to see where you’re going. That’s Susan all right. Well, give it here.” And the man held out a dirty hand capped by the longest, sharpest nails either child had ever seen.
Susan and Charles looked at each other hesitantly. Charles was the first to recover his manners.
“Ch-Ch-Charles Oakenfeld, sir,” he said, shaking the man’s hand.
The tall stranger took firm hold of Charles’s right hand, and then, without letting go, bent over and snatched Charles’s backpack with his left. But instead of running off with it, the man held the bag up to his eyes and squinted at the lock on the zipper. And then he did the strangest thing either child had ever seen (and these children had seen their fair share of strangeness). There, in the Quebec airport, surrounded by dozens of perfectly normal-looking people heading home or away on vacation or business, the tall dirty smelly stranger pulled his hand from Charles’s and began biting his nails.
Just one nail, Charles realized after a moment: the one capping the longest finger on his right hand. He went at it intently, stopping to pull his finger from his mouth periodically to check his progress. Susan and Charles could only stare in fascinated horror.
“ ’At should do it,” the man said finally. And he spat a bit of nail onto the floor.
Susan and Charles looked at each other. Do what? they both wondered.
The answer wasn’t long in coming. The man brought the jagged end of his bitten nail to the lock Susan had put on Charles’s suitcase and deftly slipped it into the keyhole. He twisted his hand and the lock popped open with a thin snap. “There you go,” the man said, handing the open lock to Susan, the bag to Charles. “Problem solved.”
Susan and Charles continued to stare at the man, dumbfounded. Finally Susan managed to swallow the lump out of her throat.
“Please, sir. Who—well, who are you?”
“Who am I?” The man sounded hurt that the children didn’t know. “What, and after lighting your fires for three months you don’t remember me? And doing the grocery shopping so’s Applethwaite could fix you three squares a day plus snacks? Name’s Zenubian, of course.” And then, with a wink so tiny Charles thought he might have imagined it, the man—Mr. Zenubian—added, “What did you think, I was invisible or something?”