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WHEN I wasn’t outside exploring or listening to Edgar’s lectures, I passed the days just as I would have back at Uncle Al’s cottage. I read. I read a lot, sometimes while curled up on the love seat in the workshop, but more often outside near the still brook.
Edgar let me borrow anything I wanted from his library of textbooks, travel journals and diaries that he had collected during his lifetime. From these I committed to memory dozens of places in vivid detail, including seascapes, landscapes and architectures. I wished I had the ability to do the same with characters and personalities. After briefly considering drawing pictures of people and memorizing them, I abandoned the idea altogether just in case Valcas found the drawings and used them to find me.
What bothered me was that Edgar blamed himself for all the problems that Valcas and the travel glasses caused me. This, I felt, was my fault because in my own search for answers I’d brought my problems with me to Edgar and his home. Then I made no efforts to leave because I felt lost and helpless as to what to do next.
One afternoon, disgusted by these thoughts and the fact that I still didn’t have a plan, I went outside to where I could brood in private. I sat down on a patch of Kentucky bluegrass under an ancient cypress tree with plentiful clusters of reddish-orange seed cones. Hours passed, regrettably unproductive hours.
Instead of thinking about Valcas and the travel glasses, my mind wandered onto the topic of family. Edgar felt more like family to me than my own family members ever did. Mom left me on purpose after my father left both of us. Toward him I felt less of a sense of abandonment—I never got to hear his side of the story, and Mom wouldn’t talk about it long enough to fill me in on what his part of the story could possibly be. There had to be a good reason for his absence. Maybe he’d been in an accident. Maybe he was dead.
Then there was Uncle Al, who I knew was a good person who went out of his way to help me. But he didn’t want me around either. After Uncle Al contacted the police and helped me with the process of getting the Plaka Portraits removed from the internet, I overheard him talking to Mom about the incident on the phone. I was so embarrassed that I hadn’t mentioned it to her myself. The words Uncle Al used that night confirmed something I’d already expected, that I would eventually need to leave the cottage and Lake Winston permanently. Hearing those words coming out of his mouth hurt me much, much more.
“I can’t live like this,” he’d said. “She haunts the house like a ghost—it’s gotten worse. When the girl turns eighteen, she’s out.” He’d finally openly rejected me.
With these thoughts on my mind, Edgar found me sitting under the tree with my head tilted up toward the sky, eyes closed, brows furrowed.
“Excuse me, Calla,” he said. “I made some mint leaf cakes and dandelion tea. Will you share a picnic with me?”
“Sure, thanks,” I replied, trying to shake off of the ugliness of what I’d just been thinking.
“Something occurred to me just recently.” Edgar coughed.
“Oh?”
“Well, yes. Let me just pour you some of this tea.”
“Thank you.”
“Calla, you are spending an awful lot of time on the running away aspect of your plans. Have you considered confronting Valcas instead?”
I cringed at Valcas’ name. “What? Why?”
“I’m just recommending a more offensive approach to the situation. You cannot, or rather should not, have to live a life hiding or tramping from place to place in constant fear. You can’t run away from him forever. Of that I am certain.”
I immediately wondered whether Edgar was rejecting me too, telling me to leave the workshop. I could feel my lips tremble as I tried to respond.
“How do I confront someone like him? Are you asking me to surrender to his plan? To marry him?”
Edgar’s face turned a shade paler. He had no response, but his brows were furrowed as if he was deep in thought.
“Excuse me,” he said. He walked away, leaving the basket of cakes with me.
I didn’t see him for the rest of the day. I avoided dinner. Instead, I wandered around the woods long after it grew dark. When I returned to the workshop, the lights were out and Edgar was already asleep.
The next morning I wasn’t sure whether I felt more rejected, embarrassed, scared or challenged to do something about all of the above. Edgar wasn’t in his laboratory, so I figured he was outside in his garden. I skipped my daily run. In addition to going to bed late, I was exhausted by a series of nightmares, all of which involved either being locked up or embarrassingly exposed. The more terrifying images from those dreams flashed in my mind, mercilessly taunting me as I groggily reached inside my backpack for my hairbrush.
My hand grazed the T-shirt I’d wrapped around the glasses and stopped. I removed the package from the bag and slowly unwrapped the T-shirt. A moment later, the glasses were on my face. I never did figure out why I put on the glasses after Edgar’s initial warning not to wear them unless it was absolutely necessary, but I suspected that it had something to do with his recent recommendation that I confront Valcas.
I stood there stupidly, knowing that I was standing still with no intention of traveling anywhere. I wasn’t searching for anything. There was no bright light—no everywhere or everywhen. The dark lenses obscured my view of the living room, leaving me feeling alone in a world of darkness.
I wasn’t alone for long.
An image of a person appeared against a white background. A lump formed in my throat. He stood out against the blank background like a cardboard cutout glued onto white canvas.
Valcas looked back at me with a crazed smile. I shuddered, feeling him see me through a pair of dark glasses that he too was wearing. He didn’t reach out or try to pursue me. He couldn’t—his hands were bound with metal shackles. One of his legs was roughly bandaged in gauze stained with dried blood.
His breathing was labored, but he spoke. “There is no distance that you can place between us that will promise you your safety. You abandoned any hope for security back at my palace. Enjoy the glasses, Calla. Whether you are with or without them, I will recover you.”
There were so many things I wanted to say to him—like the fact that he was a creepy scumbag who had no business having anything to do with my life. Oh, and that the shackles looked pretty good on him. Good luck trying to capture me bound up like that. But I couldn’t move my lips. The shock of seeing him paralyzed me.
Then he was gone. The white background with Valcas’ image on it disappeared. And so did everything else.