The bus ride home wasn’t at all awkward. Mr. Bluehair even saved a seat for Antoinette and Aidan. Apparently, being Antoinette’s friend earned Aidan some points with the trench-coat clan.
The awkward part came when they reached his house. Aidan checked his pockets. He looked all through his backpack. “I can’t believe it!” Aidan complained. He turned several shades of red.
“What?”
“I forgot my keys,” he answered sheepishly. “But my mom should be home soon.”
“S’okay,” Antoinette replied with a shrug. “We can just spread the work out on your porch and knock out our math homework.”
“Good idea,” Aidan said.
Antoinette really is smart, Aidan had to admit, and not just in the bookish kind of way.
“Mom will probably faint from the shock of seeing me doing homework without having to be told to do it.”
Three pages of trigonometry later, Aidan’s mom arrived.
“Hello,” she said, stepping onto the porch. “You must be Antoinette.”
Antoinette stood and held out a gentle hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Thomas,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you too. So, why are you two outside and not inside working on homework?” she asked.
“I forgot the key,” Aidan said.
“Well, come on in,” Mrs. Thomas said as she opened the door.
“Mom, Antoinette and I just finished our math assignment.”
Aidan’s mom looked at the completed assignments and stared blankly. “You even showed your work,” she mumbled.
“Can Antoinette stay for dinner?” Aidan asked.
“We were just going to order pizza, but you’re welcome to join us—if it’s okay with your parents, of course.”
“I’m sure they won’t mind,” Antoinette replied. “I’ll call them to make sure, though.”
“Mom, we’re going to the basement,” Aidan said as he led Antoinette into the house. “I want to show her my paintings of The Realm.”
“All right. But Antoinette should call her parents before it gets too late.”
“I’ll call right now, Mrs. Thomas,” she said and flipped open her cell phone. But Mrs. Reed didn’t answer, so she left a message.
Aidan and Antoinette tromped down the stairs to Aidan’s new art studio. “Did you see her?” Aidan asked. “She was still staring at my math papers. Probably checking my work.”
“If she is, she’ll be in for a treat. Every one of your answers is correct.”
Aidan smiled as he clicked on the track lights that illuminated his artwork.
“Whoa!” Antoinette gasped, looking at the paintings. “These are incredible!”
Aidan blushed. “I’m just getting used to painting with acrylics, but I’m sure you could do just as good.”
“No, I mean it, Aidan,” she said, walking up to his picture of the Grimwalk. “I’ve read about these places . . . I’ve dreamed about them. They look just how I imagined they’d look. Have you actually been to all these places in The Realm?”
Aidan nodded.
“Okay, you have got to tell me everything!” Antoinette said, sitting on a stool. “Start with how you got into The Realm. I didn’t think anyone went there until they died.”
“King Eliam called me,” Aidan said.
“How?”
“There were signs. Weird things happened to me.”
“What kinds of weird things?”
“Well, as soon as we moved out here, I started having nightmares—horrible recurring dreams. Especially this one where Paragor himself kills me.” Antoinette went very still and her eyes widened. But she said nothing.
“Then, one time when I was in my room, I felt like something was staring at me from outside the window . . . which didn’t make any sense because my room’s up on the second floor. When I looked, the pine tree shook violently as if something large had been perched in it and flown off. I ran outside and saw an enormous shadow.”
“Wait,” Antoinette said. “An enormous shadow?”
“Yes,” Aidan replied. “It was huge—like something invisible was flying overhead.”
Antoinette’s brows furrowed and she rocked on the edge of the stool.
“I think King Eliam sent a dragon to watch over me,” Aidan continued. “At the time, it really messed with my head. But the weirdest thing that happened was when I was down here in the basement. I was bored, and I came down to poke around. It was really dark—we didn’t have the track lights up yet—and I started hearing strange scratching sounds. It came from right over there beneath the stairs.”
Aidan pointed. Antoinette stared and held her breath. It was silent in the basement.
Suddenly, Antoinette’s cell phone shrilled, and they both jumped.
Antoinette flipped open her phone. “Hi, Mom.”
She smiled at first, but then her expression clouded. “What? Why? . . . I know, I know—it’s important. Okay, I’ll be ready. And, Mom, guess what? Aidan believes! I know. That is so cool, isn’t it? What? Mom, that’s a great idea. It’ll almost make up for today. I’ll ask him.”
Antoinette lowered the phone. “I’m not going to be able to stay for dinner.”
“Why not?” Aidan’s shoulders sagged in disappointment.
“Our neighbor just had a baby, and we’re going to go by the hospital tonight. But my mom said you could come to our house for dinner Friday . . . if you want.”
“Uh, yeah,” Aidan said. But he wondered what his parents would say.
Putting the phone back to her ear, Antoinette told her mom where Aidan lived and then closed the phone. “My mom said she’ll be here in ten minutes. Quick, tell me! What happened after the scratching sounds?”
“Well, the sounds got louder, and blue sparks started swirling on the floor. Then, just like that, it all stopped, and there were three tall clay pots. In them, I found the scrolls—the scrolls that tell about Alleble and of Paragor’s betrayal.”
“That’s what’s in my book,” Antoinette said quietly, half to herself.
“I needed my grandfather to help me understand the poem at the end of the story. That was how I went in. The poem was the invitation.”
“Poem?” Antoinette echoed. “Aidan, I’ve been having dreams about The Realm too. And just the other day, I was out in my garden getting the last of the tomatoes, and I saw the same kind of shadow you described. Do you think King Eliam could be calling me to come to The Realm? But my book doesn’t have a poem at the end—just blank pages. What could that mean?”
Aidan shook his head. “I don’t know, but when I was in Alleble, I had a friend there who told me that King Eliam invites only a few from our world prior to death—and then only for special missions.”
“What was your mission?”
“I was called to travel to a small kingdom called Mithegard. It was one of the isolated cities Paragor wanted to force into a dark alliance with his dark realm. I was part of a team of twelve sent to Mithegard to convince them to seek protection from Alleble.”
“Did you succeed?” Antoinette asked.
Before Aidan could answer, the doorbell rang.
“Oh, that’s probably my mom!” Antoinette said. Aidan started to head for the stairs, but Antoinette grabbed his arm. “Tell me one more thing before we go up. This painting you’re working on now . . .” Antoinette pointed. “Why doesn’t that knight have any eyes?”
Aidan looked at the painting of Robby’s Glimpse and got goose bumps. If only there was some way he could reach Robby or his Glimpse. Maybe . . . , Aidan thought. But before he could answer her, his mother called downstairs.
“Aidan! Antoinette’s mother is here. Come on up.”
As Aidan and Antoinette came up the stairs, Mrs. Reed was saying, “Thank you so much for inviting Antoinette to stay for dinner. I’m terribly sorry that I have to take her away. But our neighbor had twins—”
“Twins?” Antoinette exclaimed. “How cool is that!”
“Very cool, indeed, Antoinette,” Mrs. Reed said. Then, turning back to Aidan’s mother, she asked, “Perhaps Aidan could have dinner with us Friday night?”
“Yes, that would work fine.”
And it was settled that easily. Mrs. Reed would pick up Aidan and Antoinette on Friday after school. She would drive him home around nine. Aidan couldn’t wait. There was so much left to tell about The Realm, about Alleble, about Glimpses. And there was the inkling of a plan Aidan was developing to follow up on. Aidan wondered if Antoinette would consider it. Maybe, he thought.
“Come on,” Aidan said into the phone. “You gotta be home sooner or later.” Since Antoinette left, he had dialed Robby’s number every fifteen minutes, but no one ever answered. It didn’t make sense. A month and a half earlier they were best friends. Then . . . nothing. It was like Robby had disappeared from the face of the planet. Aidan was just about to give up trying, when . . .
“Hello?” A voice with a pronounced Floridian drawl answered.
Aidan nearly jumped out of his chair. “Hello, Robby? It’s me, Aidan!”
“Aidan, hey!” Robby answered. “I was fixin’ to call you. But I’ve been kinda busy gettin’ ready for school.”
“Yeah, me too. My first day was today. How was soccer camp?”
“What?” Robby asked.
“Soccer camp at Camp Ramblesomething.”
“Oh, that. It was fine. But that ended a few weeks ago.”
Aidan frowned. He’d sent a dozen emails, called innumerable times—but no replies from Robby.
“Did you get any of my emails?” Aidan asked. He didn’t know why, but he felt embarrassed for asking.
“Uh, yeah.” Robby hesitated. “Sorry, but like I said, I’ve been real busy, so I haven’t had a chance to reply. You know me, I’m not much for writin’ anyway. And my sister Jill hogs the computer most nights.”
It sounded like a lot of excuses to Aidan, but he knew an argument would not help him deliver the message he hoped to share. “Uh, okay. Robby, listen, I’ve been wanting to talk to you because something really cool has happened to me.”
No reply.
“Remember in that email I sent you, the one where I told you about the strange thing in the tree outside the window of my new house?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, okay, that was the first thing—well, that and the dreams. But anyway, I was looking through the basement and I found some ancient scrolls. They told me about this place called Alleble. It’s a kingdom, and well, you can go there if you believe.”
“Righ—ight,” Robby replied. He always said the word that way, as if it had two syllables.
Something was not right, Aidan felt sure. It seemed like Robby wasn’t hearing him, like he had his ear to the phone but was listening to someone else or watching television.
“Robby, did you read my email about the scrolls?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so. . . . What was it about again?”
Aidan expelled an angry sigh and launched into the account of all the adventures he’d had when he entered The Door Within—including Grampin’s heart attack.
When he was finished, there was dead silence on the phone.
Finally, Robby spoke. “I’m real sorry about your granddaddy.”
“Thanks,” Aidan said, then swallowed hard. “Robby, did you hear what I said about my adventures?”
“Yeah, Aidan, but you kinda lose me when ya’ go off on that imaginative stuff. So are you writin’ a story or somethin’? Is that it?”
“No,” Aidan barked. “I’m telling you, I went there. I became a knight! These people, er . . . Glimpses, I mean. They are twins of us. What they do affects us and what we do affects them.”
Aidan thought for sure that would get a response, but then heard: “I know, Mama, I’m comin’. But it’s Aidan on the phone. Aidan Thomas . . . the kid who lived around the block. Yeah, I know he told me not to. Okay, Mama, okay.”
“Robby?”
“Uh, yeah, sorry. That was Mama. We’re leavin’ to do some shopping. I’ll have to call you later.”
“But, Robby—”
“Good hearin’ from you, Aidan. Bye.”
“Well, how’d it go?” Aidan’s dad asked as he walked into the kitchen and saw Aidan hanging up.
“Awful, Dad. Robby was acting weird, almost like he didn’t know me.”
“Well, that’s a shame, son.”
“And when I tried to tell him about the scrolls and Alleble, he wouldn’t listen. Thought I was writing a story.”
Aidan’s dad sat down at the kitchen table and gestured for Aidan to join him.
“Aidan, remember that the Scrolls, Alleble, Glimpses—it all sounds crazy to those who do not want to see. You cannot make him believe.”
“I know, Dad, but he’s my best friend. He ought to trust me.”
“Just like I ought to have trusted you,” Mr. Thomas said, and he glanced toward the study where Grampin had spent most of his time. “Just like I ought to have trusted my own father. He tried to convince me for twenty years, and I just didn’t want to hear it. In one way, it sounds too good to be true. In another way, it’s frightening.”
“Frightening?”
“Well, yes. Most people believe only in the here and now—in what they can see in front of them. We get kind of comfortable living in the moment. Well, Alleble, Paragory, The Realm—it’s a threat to that comfort. If it’s true, then our whole idea of the way the world works and why we’re here on this giant spinning mudball gets blown away.”
Aidan grinned.
“What?”
“Grampin used to call the earth a mudball too.”
“I catch myself talking like him all the time. I wish I had listened to him earlier. But I was hardheaded. Of course, your mother thinks I have truly lost my mind. She thinks it’s my way of grieving for Grampin . . . but she’ll come around. We’ll gang up on her.”
They shared a laugh, but later as Aidan lay on his bed, he felt anything but happy. Robby was in danger, and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. When he had left Alleble, he had a plan—a plan to see Gwenne again, a plan to save Robby. Now, Aidan wasn’t sure if any of it would work.
Aidan turned on his side and stared out the window over the whispering pine trees.
Neither Aidan nor Antoinette could anticipate what would happen later that night. For there was another plan at work in their lives.
