The drive from Quebec took the rest of the afternoon, and after staring out the window for a while first Charles and then Susan fell asleep. The sound of crunching gravel woke Charles from disturbing visions of deserts and forests. On the opposite seat, Susan was stretched out. Judging from the expression on her face, her dreams were as tumultuous as Charles’s. Her tongue filled up her cheek—a habit she had worked hard to break in the last nine months—and Charles smiled tenderly at this pre–Drift House innocence. He did love his older sister, even if she could be a bit bossy. He recalled all their recent quarrels with some anguish, as well as their promise to their mother to try to get along. If only older sisters didn’t have to make everything so hard.
When he sat up he realized instantly they were on the last stretch of road before Drift House. A low stone wall ran on the left side of the road. Beyond the wall a wild forest sprawled up the side of a steep hill beyond which nothing was visible—just the sort of natural screen to hide a house that occasionally went for a trip out to sea. The coniferous fir and pine trees were dark and thick, but the deciduous oaks and maples were still thin leaved and delicate looking, their pale spring foliage only lightly tinted by chlorophyll. Charles was more interested in electronics than botany, but still, they were good, specific words, and, without thinking, he whispered them aloud.
“Chlorophyll. Deciduous. Coniferous.”
On the other seat, Susan’s eyes fluttered open. She peered at Charles blearily.
“What did you call me?”
Charles frowned, and used his tongue to stick out the side of his cheek. But even as he did so he wondered where all this antagonism came from. It seemed to get worse and worse the closer they got to—
“Drift House!” Susan said, sitting up.
It wasn’t the house she’d seen, just the arched iron gate with its coat of arms at the crest. The crossed swords, and the Viking ship they now knew was the Captain Quoin and his Time Pirates’ Chronos, and the parrot on its sail: Xerxes, the great-grandfather of their very own parrot, President Wilson. A sense of boundless possibility fueled both children, but as they turned through the gates a harsh voice cut through their reverie.
“It’s a foolish mind that confuses a thing with the sign for it. Drift House is still a mile behind these gates.”
It seemed to Susan that Mr. Zenubian deliberately slowed to prolong the agony; on the other side of Charles’s glasses, the tangle of trees and vines grew blurry, and he took off his lenses and cleaned them on his shirt. Bits of blue flashed between the branches. Pebbles snapped beneath the tires. And then:
“I see it!” both children exclaimed.
As the car descended the hill, the ancient ivy-covered structure shimmered into view. To Charles, it was bits and pieces: the cannons poking through the balustrade, the parrot-shaped weathervane atop the solarium, the window through which he had watched Susan vanish beneath the sea in the mermaids’ golden bubble. To Susan, it was a hollow outline, flat decks, sharp prow, boat shaped. But to both children it felt magical: filled with mystery and adventure.
“Pshaw,” came the jarring voice in the front seat. “Not a thread of smoke in sight. Can’t the useless man even put a log on the grate?”
Well, that part didn’t feel so magical.
Susan was out first and dashing up the gravel path, Charles following quickly after. But halfway up the path he stopped. He’d suddenly remembered his backpack.
He’d remembered the book inside his backpack.
Mr. Zenubian had opened the trunk and the children’s several bags stood on the driveway. Charles didn’t want this unknown man to be handling a gift his time-traveling brother had gone to so much trouble to deliver. And so, glancing one more time at Drift House, he hurried back toward the driveway.
“I’ll help,” he said as he drew close to the tall, thin, smelly stranger.
“It’s more than the other one offered. But that’s girls for you, right, Charles?”
Just a few hours ago Charles had complained that Susan never let him do anything. But now he heard himself saying: “I hate girls!”
Mr. Zenubian handed Charles his backpack. “Older sisters is the worst kind of girls. Ain’t that right, Charles?”
In his eagerness to reclaim his backpack Charles didn’t notice that Mr. Zenubian had given Charles the one piece of luggage he wanted to carry. But as he did so, the caretaker looked Charles straight in the eye.
“Don’t let her take it from you, Charles.”
Charles stumbled backward a step. “Wh-what?”
“It’s yours, Charles. Don’t let her take it.”
Mr. Zenubian didn’t say what “it” was. He kept his eyes fixed on Charles, and even though Charles found him creepy and mysterious, there was also something trustworthy in the directness of his stare. But to trust him more than Susan?
Just then Susan’s voice echoed across the lawn.
“Uncle Farley!”
Charles turned and saw the figure of their uncle filling up the open doorway to Drift House. Miss Applethwaite’s cooking had obviously added a few pounds to his already stout figure.
He glanced back at Mr. Zenubian, but the caretaker ignored Charles, as if the previous conversation had not taken place. And in Charles’s head it already felt a little dreamy. Something about Susan? Taking something? Had he dreamed it in the car?
Mr. Zenubian had hoisted all the bags and now pushed past Charles, nearly knocking him down.
“Well? Is it helping, or is it just going to stand there all day?” And he stalked toward the house, his scarecrow form wavering beneath so much weight.
Charles shook his head to clear it. He turned, and there was Uncle Farley, his arms still clasped around Susan.
“Uncle Farley, Uncle Farley!” Charles shouted. And, strapping his backpack on, he ran across the lawn.
There were hugs and handshakes and more hugs and hot tea and still more hugs, and in the background the heavy tread of Mr. Zenubian’s dirty boots as he carried the children’s bags—all except Charles’s backpack—up to the second floor. When he’d finished he appeared in the doorway to the music room, where the children and their uncle were enjoying fragrant pots of mint tea. The caretaker’s lanky dark frame filled up the doorway like a tattered curtain.
“If that’ll be all, I’ll be catching up on my regular duties.”
“Oh, ah, yes,” Uncle Farley said. “Thank you so much for volunteering to pick up Susan and Charles. I’m not sure I could’ve even found the airport.”
“Just follow the planes,” Mr. Zenubian said. He vanished from view, a faint “Volunteering—hah!” lingering behind him, along with the manure-y odor of his shoes.
No one said anything until his heavy footsteps gave way to the slam of the front door. Then:
“Uncle Farley!” Susan practically yelled. “Who is he?”
Uncle Farley smiled weakly. “Mr. Zenubian, of course.”
“We were here for more than three months last year,” Charles said, “and we never saw him once. I thought he was like Miss Applethwaite. Did he just … appear?”
“That about sums it up. I looked out my window and there he was. Planting tulip bulbs.”
“But, but,” Susan stammered, “how can you know it’s really him?”
Uncle Farley shrugged. “I can’t see how it couldn’t be him. He knows all there is to know about Drift House, and he seems to get an enormous amount of work done in no time at all, just like Miss Applethwaite—”
“Have you seen her?” Charles interrupted.
“No, no sign of her, though the dumbwaiter still works as splendidly as ever. Crumpet, Susan?”
Susan reached for the steaming buttered muffin.
Uncle Farley helped himself to a crumpet as well. “My guess is that taking Drift House onto the Sea of Time unleashed some sort of, I don’t know, energy or force or something. This is obviously not standard physics we’re talking about. It’s more akin to—”
“Magic?” Charles suggested.
Uncle Farley nodded sheepishly at his nephew. “We’re men of science, Charles. I prefer to think of it as something undiscovered, or unexplained. Perhaps they’ll name it after you one day—the Charles Force.”
Last fall Susan had grown used to the fact that Charles and Uncle Farley shared certain interests she did not. But still, she felt it best to nip this “men of science” and “Charles Force” stuff in the bud.
“Ahem. The important question is, does this mean Mr. Zenubian has to come with us when we go on”—she dropped her voice—“the Sea of Time?”
Uncle Farley tried to suppress a grin. “And what makes you think we’ll be making any visits to the Sea of Time? Our last trip nearly ended in disaster.”
“Uncle Farley!” Charles and Susan said at the same time. Charles went on, “Why, if you try to stop us, I’ll lock you in your bedroom and take the house out myself. I—I’ll unleash the Charles Force on you!”
Charles’s voice was so forceful that the conversation came to a brief, sharp stop. Stroking the bag in his lap, Charles tried to make a joke of it all.
“Avast ye maties,” he said in his best imitation of a pirate accent. “I’ll make ye walk the plank, I will.”
Susan looked at Charles funny, then grabbed her uncle’s knee.
“Where should we go, Uncle Farley?” Susan said.
“When?” Charles threw in. He felt a tingle on his legs from Mario’s book and said, “Can we go—”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, children,” Uncle Farley interrupted Charles. “It’s very late, and here I am spoiling your dinner with savories. Let’s get you settled and properly fed, and in the morning we can map out a few plans. Remember, we have all summer.”
Susan, remembering a comment Pierre Marin had made when they left him on the Island of the Past, said, “We have all the time in the world.”
Charles frowned. He’d remembered the same comment, and had wanted to say it himself.
Uncle Farley, seeing the charged look pass between brother and sister, stood up abruptly.
“All right then. What shall we have for dinner?”
“Spaghetti,” Susan said immediately.
“Hamburgers,” Charles said at exactly the same time.
Uncle Farley smiled wanly at his niece and nephew.
“I think we’d better have both.”