Chapter Three

Mark hesitated. He wondered whether to go back home and get his bike. Decided he didn’t want to chance running into Ariel again, and began the walk to his best friend’s place. Molly lived on a street with large, stately, affluent houses flanked by trees and landscaped gardens. Mark’s family lived only a few blocks away, but on the other side of a busy road that divided the rich homes from the not-so-rich. Their house was much more modest and the garden just a lawn with a few bushes down one edge. Alasdair Leung lived further away again, in a condominium townhouse with a scrap of grass at the front. Mark pressed the doorbell.

Alasdair’s mother answered. She was a small, fair-haired woman, usually rather quiet and reserved. Today she was almost cold.

“He’s downstairs,” she said shortly and went back into the kitchen.

Alasdair was lying on the battered rec-room sofa, headphones clamped to his ears. He took them off when he saw Mark.

“What’s the matter with your mom?” Mark asked. Then wished he hadn’t, because of the expression on his friend’s face. Alasdair’s eyes squinted like someone with a headache who had just felt an extra-strong pain shoot through.

“There was a big scene with Dad last night.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mark. Alasdair’s parents were going through a divorce. His mother and Alasdair had already moved out and into the townhouse, while his father stayed in the big house nearby. Scenes were happening every couple of weeks.

“Now he wants me to live with him.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know.” Alasdair got up restlessly and started shuffling through DVDs. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to live with either of them, to tell you the truth. They’re both so stubborn. A Scot and a Chinese—you don’t get any more stubborn than that.” He stood for a while flicking a plastic DVD cover with his thumbnail. “Sometimes I think I’d like to go back with Dad. Mom treats me as though I’m still twelve years old.”

Mark nodded, thinking maybe that wasn’t so surprising. Alasdair looked much younger than his fifteen years. He had just recently started to grow a bit taller, but he still seemed—well, young. And right now he seemed depressed.

To distract him, Mark pulled the weighted stick out of his pocket and said, “Well, listen what happened to me . . .”

Alasdair’s attention was caught immediately by the story. “Let me see it,” he said at the end, holding out his hand for the stick.

The weight at the end was a polished stone, about the width of his palm with a hole bored in the centre where the stick fitted. It was an unusual light blue in colour, streaked with white. It was strangely heavy and cool, and stayed cool even as he handled it. Curving shapes were carved into it, wrapping the hole in sinous lines. Alasdair, fascinated, let the weight nest in his palm and stared at it.

“Those carvings almost look Chinese,” he said.

“Do they say anything?” Mark asked promptly.

Alasdair shook his head, slightly exasperated. “How would I know? You know I’ve never learned Chinese. They just make me think of something like that.”

Mark took it from him, studied it again, then shrugged. “Could be.”

“Let’s go and see if we can see her again.” Alasdair had lost all the listlessness he’d had when his friend arrived. Mark hesitated and looked at his watch. The afternoon was getting on, and Ariel was insisting that they have supper at six o’clock every night.

“Okay,” he said. “But we’ll have to hurry.”

So, for the third time that day, there were visitors to the flat rock. By now, the June warmth had soaked into the ravine, making the air feel heavy as a water-filled sponge. The breeze had dropped to nothing, and in the quiet it felt like the two boys were crashing through underbrush like rogue elephants. “Shhh,” they told each other, but couldn’t seem to go any more quietly. Mark wasn’t surprised that there was no one on the rock. They crouched on the embankment for twenty minutes or so, waiting. At last, Alasdair said, “I guess we’re not going to see her.”

He sounded so disappointed that Mark said, “We can come back again.” Although by now, he was beginning to wonder if he had ever seen any antlered figure. If it wasn’t for the stones in his pocket and the stick Alasdair was now carrying, he’d think it was all a hallucination.

It seemed less of an illusion after supper, when Joss told him about her adventure.

“She put her tongue on Molly’s forehead?” he asked, slightly revolted at the idea.

“Yeah, it sounds gross. I didn’t think of it at the time. And then it seemed as though Molly could understand what she was saying.”

But Mark was wholly unconvinced by this. “No ... you must have that wrong, Joss. That couldn’t be. You just couldn’t hear her. Or else Molly just imagined that’s what she was saying.”

His twin ignored this “What is a spindle? Do you know?”

“Well . . .,” he searched his memory for something elusive. “Isn’t there something in a fairy tale. Someone pricking a finger on a spindle?”

“Sleeping Beauty!” said Joss triumphantly. “Of course. But I was never quite sure what a spindle is. Something sharp, I guess.”

“Something on a spinning wheel, too,” said Mark, trying to remember the picture book that his mother used to read to him. A girl reaching out towards an old crone at a spinning wheel.

“Right!” Joss said, remembering the same picture at last. “Well, I can’t imagine she was looking for a spinning wheel. You’re right. Molly must have imagined it.”