River Templeton stands in the doorway with an older version of himself. His father. Must be. My in-breath is quick and loud, and Monday’s head whips around from them to me again.
“Why did you gasp, One?”
“He looks just like his father,” I whisper, “who looks just like—”
“Why are you whispering?” Monday interrupts. “They are too far away to hear.”
Our river has washed away more even than we think. More even than our lives and livelihoods. It’s not just that we are pale, whittled down, water worn, corroded. Our actual DNA is weaker than theirs. Monday and I barely look related. Triplets are rarely identical, but the three of us don’t really even look alike or all that much like Nora either. River is a copy of his father who’s a copy of his. It’s like our genes are not just infirm but mutated, like we’ve sloughed off our essential natures. They’re shiny and strong and cloning themselves. We’re eroding toward gone.
Shiny Nathan Templeton claps his son’s shoulder and then gives him a little shove, and River stumbles out the door in our direction, slow and sheepish, like a cranky toddler.
“He is coming, One!” Monday shrieks, drops her bike, and tries to hide behind me. She is five inches taller than I am.
He stops a foot away from us. He looks more normal than he did at school—he’s got on a T-shirt and shorts and mussy Saturday-morning hair, but he still has that glow. It might, like Pooh said, be a lifetime of wealth, clean water, high (and met) expectations. Or it might be more a shimmer than a glow, like when it’s hot and it looks like there’s water pooling on the asphalt up ahead, but when you actually get there it’s flat and dry and empty.
He’s also carrying a top hat. And a wand. He’s bright red, trying to hide the wand by shoving it into his back pocket, and having about as much luck—for about the same reason—as Monday.
If he were my friend or even my sort-of friend, I’d be embarrassed for him since he was clearly in the middle of something private when his father pushed him out the door like a two-year-old. But since his family’s basically my family’s sworn enemy, I’m thinking it’s okay to laugh at him.
What Monday’s thinking (and therefore saying) is “There are no dance classes in Bourne,” her first words to him since they met on his way out of the boys’ bathroom at school. “There used to be Miss Molly’s when we were little, but she died and that was only ballet.”
He has no idea what she’s talking about. Even I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“So you better change,” she peeks out from behind me to add.
“Change?” He has a funny look on his face. Is he confused or contemptuous? (“Supercilious,” Petra would say.) I admit Monday’s not making sense, and he’s probably used to people making sense. Still. He came over to talk to us, even if he didn’t want to. We’re on his lawn, yes, but it wasn’t his until this week.
“Out of your dance clothes,” Monday explains.
He looks down at his ratty T-shirt, up at me for help, back to Monday. “These aren’t dance clothes.”
“The top hat.” She waves at it, her arm emerging over my shoulder alongside my ear. “The tiny dance cane.”
“Oh.” He blushes again. “It’s not a tiny cane. It’s a wand. I was”—it seems like he won’t finish that sentence but then concludes it’s too late anyway—“practicing magic.”
“You are magic?” Full of wonder.
“No,” he says at once. Then, “Well, you know.”
“No.” She does not. But she’s stepped out from behind me to get a better look at him.
“I’m just practicing. Messing around. An amateur magician or whatever.”
“A wizard apprentice?” Monday’s eyes are open as prairies, splitting the difference between impressed and afraid.
“No, just for fun.” He can’t decide if she’s making fun of him or not. “Or like for little kids’ birthday parties maybe.”
“Is that why your father made you come here?” This is the first on-point question she’s asked yet.
“What? No.” But he answers a different question, the one he thinks she’s asking rather than the one I wish she were. What she actually means is anyone’s guess. “He saw you ride up and thought the well-bred thing to do was come say hello. Dad’s big on well-bred.”
“He wants you to use your dark arts against us.” She scuttles behind me again. I can feel her trying to keep it together. I can also feel little flecks of spit flying out of her mouth onto the top of my head.
He assumes she’s joking, starts laughing, sees he’s the only one, trails off. We have run out of things to talk about already, and I’m glad because I’m ready to leave now. Past ready. Creeping toward desperate.
But then the library front door opens slowly—it’s still wired for wheelchair access to come ajar, ghostly, at the press of a giant square button—and we see Nathan again, standing in the doorway, smiling. In fact, his whole body is smiling. He’s wearing new-looking, tech-flaunting hiking boots, but you can tell that if you could see his toes, they’d be smiling too.
“Guests! Welcome!” He waves from the doorway for us to come in like when the lifeguards hear thunder at the pool, and then he turns and goes back inside, that confident we’ll follow, as the door closes slowly behind him.
I know that talking to Nathan Templeton is my best shot at finding out something my mother could use, but I have exactly no desire to do so. I feel many things, but one of them, embarrassingly, undeniably, is frightened.
River rolls his eyes. Then he reaches into his back pocket and retrieves his wand, waves it over us, makes his voice deep and cavernous. “The Raging River commands you to come inside.”
“The raging river?” says Monday.
“You know”—his voice back to normal—“like the Great Houdini. Or the Powerful Oz. Get it? Because a powerful river is raging, but raging also means—”
“Thanks for the offer but…” I interrupt then trail off with a tone and facial expression which I hope finish the sentence for me. Thanks, but you can’t command me to do anything, and I would rather drink actual tap water than spend my Saturday morning with your family.
But Monday is bouncing on the balls of her feet and doing a little dance with her fingers because, be it from the devil incarnate, or at least his grandson, an invitation to get back into her beloved library is not one she is going to refuse.
Two
It has been two years and three months and some number of days since the last time I was in this building. I study Mab’s pulled-together eyebrows and pulled-down lips and conclude she does not want to enter River’s house, but I want to enter my library so I accept, even though those two places are the same place at the moment. River Templeton taps the wheelchair square with his wand, and the door glides open. If this were my first time here, I might think this is magic, but it is not my first time here, and the door opens with the same little puff and ding as it always did, whether you use a wand or not.
As far as my nose can tell, it is exactly the same: the dusty odor of the books, the musty odor of the carpet, the hot-wood smell from bookcases heated by years of sun streaming through windows. This is the most beautiful, perfect building in our town or probably in anyone’s town.