Chapter 1. New Friend
This story began on a cool October day when the last of the gossamer webs still glittered in the sunshine and pumpkins on porches waited for evening to turn into Halloween jack-o’-lanterns. That day, eighth grader Nicholas Falconara promised himself he would never talk to anyone about his father again. He should have known that nothing good would come out of it. People might say whatever they want, but he would never let them make jokes about his family. But, as he discovered, winning a fight was easier than keeping his word.He stood by his opened locker when his classmate Lisa Zubrowski came up to him.
“Hi. Have you had a fight again?”
Nick pretended he didn’t hear. He locked the door, threw his backpack on his shoulder, and they walked down the corridor.
“Any news from your dad?”
Lisa always wanted to know everything about his father’s expeditions. Of all the people Nick knew, she deserved it more than anybody else because you wouldn’t find a more enthusiastic supporter of the fairytale world theory, something that Nick had trouble believing in.
“I talked to him this morning,” Nick said. “The communication was bad. He said it’s hot out there and rain’s pouring like hell. It’ll take two days for them to reach the camp.”
“Wednesday then,” Lisa said. “And why on earth did he have to rush with his flight? I checked the weather before his departure—it’s going to rain all week.”
“Dad said Professor Sheldon found something they’d spent years looking for.”
Lisa stared at him. “What is it?” she whispered.
Nick shrugged. “I guess something so important that they didn’t want to discuss it over the phone.”
“Whatever they found,” she said, looking up into his face, “the most important thing is your dad returned to his research. Everything will be fine.”
They went out into the hall and stopped. Nick looked around for Jeremy Wootz. Jam, as his friends knew him, was late as usual. I should’ve come with dad, Nick thought, watching people bustled around the hall. As for the school—who cares? After all, he could do homeschooling.
Jam, dressed in his Hartland varsity uniform, appeared in the hall, followed by a new kid, fair-haired, wearing a light sports jacket.
“Nick! You won’t believe it! I found you a partner.”
With a sly smile, Jam jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Lisa’s glasses flashed as she scanned the newcomer. Nick did not have time to ask what exactly he needed a partner for because the kid pushed Jam aside, stepped forward and asked:
“Are you an Inter Milan fan?”
He pointed to Nick’s black-and-blue striped T-shirt with the Italian soccer club badge.
“Always was, always will be. Why?”
The kid’s face broke into a smile. He opened his jacket and showed his jersey. Nick recognized the black and red colors of the AC Milan soccer club.
“No kidding!” Nick said with delight. “So now there’s two of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Soccer fans. Two in the entire school.”
Although the clubs were fierce rivals, meeting another soccer fan here in Hartland was like meeting an old friend.
“Well, I guess in that case we need to stick together. My name’s Ethan Werner.”
They were in the same chemistry class and exchanged a few words during the break. At lunch, they discussed the latest world cup news and the chances of each team. By the end of the day, it seemed to Nick he had known Ethan for ages. And the fact that Ethan lived nearby and had been playing tennis for several years made things even better.
♦
Two days later they played their first match. Ethan played well, and his one-handed backhand was amazing.
“Wow!” Nick said with envy after they finished the game. “It’s been so long since I played a game like this one. With Jam, it’s mostly basic groundstrokes.”
Ethan stood in front of him, spinning the racket Federer-style.
“Didn’t you say you play with your dad?”
“We do,” Nick said, “when he has time.” His father loved tennis, but they did not play together as much as Nick wanted.
“My dad has a lot of time on his hands,” Ethan said. “But he doesn’t play tennis. He doesn’t even like to watch.”
“So what does he do?”
“He is the greatest grass fighter.”
“Grass fighter?” Nick asked, perplexed.
Ethan snorted.
“He fights with grass. He mows the lawn, sometimes on weekdays and always on weekends, holidays and vacations. Between mowing, he runs sprinklers to water the lawn and uses garden hose extensions to reach the brown patches that might appear around the edges. He dumps tons of fertilizers so that the grass grows faster, which means he has to mow it more often. On random days, he applies weed-killers, bug killers, everything-killers. From time to time, he runs a professional-size aerator.”
“A what?”
“Never mind,” Ethan said. “When you hear a pause of silence, you would think he’s done with the lawn for today. And the next second he starts up his goddamned gas-powered edger and goes around the sidewalk, along the driveway, around the house, deck and flower beds. In those rare days when everything possible is done to the grass, he changes the oil in the tractor and the mower, pulls them apart, cleans and lubricates them.”
“Why does he do that?” Nick asked, imagining for a moment the chain of labor-intensive activities that looked more like a dung beetle work.
“God knows.” Ethan sighed. “At first, I thought he was just killing the time. And now I understand he sees it as the only true meaning of his life. Just think! He’s a tax inspector, for god sake! I don’t even know what is worse, the grass or taxes.” He shook his head. “What about your dad? What does he do?”
Nick hesitated for a moment. “You could call him an archaeologist.”
“Sounds like you’re not sure.”
“Well, he works as a computer engineer. That’s what he does for a living. But his real passion is the archaeology. One particular branch of it.”
“Which is what?”
Although Ethan showed a genuine interest, Nick did not rush with his answers. Every time he talked about it, it looked as if he tried to offer a believable excuse or somehow justify his father’s obsession.
“Do you know how the archaeologists do their research?” he asked. “They use documents like ancient chronicles or records of medieval cities. After they read about an event they search for proof, which they call an artifact. If they find it, then the chronicle is reliable. That’s how they reconstruct past events. But there’s another form of archaeology. It’s called mythological archaeology. My father specializes in it. The M-archaeologists search for artifacts that are mentioned in legends, myths. In fairy tales,” he added and looked at Ethan, half-expecting him to laugh. Most people didn’t take his father’s obsession with fairy tales seriously. But Ethan did not laugh. He sat beside Nick and laid the tennis racket across his lap.
“Wait a minute. What does it mean?” he asked. “If these—what-do-you-call-them—logical archaeologists?”
“Mythological,” Nick corrected him automatically.
“Okay, mythological. If they discover something, say, an object from a fairy tale, then the fairy tale—”
He broke off and looked at Nick with the question in his eyes.
“Maybe not quite a fairy tale,” Nick finished for him. “Or not a fairy tale at all.”
“Wow! How come no one thought about this before?”
“Why no one? There were other people who searched for the artifacts.”
“Really? Did they find anything?”
“It’s a long story,” Nick said evasively.
He did not want to talk about it. The touchy subject caused frequent arguments between him and his dad. Basically, he was the one who argued. As for his dad, he only presented facts, leaving Nick to decide who was right. And that’s where the problem was. When his father told him about the acoustic oscillation generator—better known as the magic pipe of the Pied Piper of Hamelin—or a portable space-time device disguised as a pair of worn hunting boots—yes, the very same famous Seven-League ones—Nick just shrugged. He did not believe in nonsense like fairy tales. For Nick, all these ‘magic’ objects, or ‘artifacts’, as his dad called them, belonged to the same category as UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Tibetan yeti, all of which lost their appeal when he was in the third grade.
Take, for example, the gravitational narrow-band reflector known as a flying carpet. When his dad found it, he thought he made a discovery that would change everything. The problem was that the carpet simply refused to fly. Tattered and faded, it hung over the sofa in father’s study, as levitation resistant as a rock, living proof that magic does not exist. Nick thought that Dad was ready to admit defeat. He was wrong. What Nick saw as a failure, his father saw only as a temporary obstacle. One needs to know the spell, concluded his father. This carpet cannot fly without magic. The powerful convictions and boundless optimism were something that set him apart from other people. How else could you deal with a lifetime obsession when everyone else viewed it, at best, a waste of time, and at worst, a sign of quiet insanity?
♦
The next evening, Ethan visited Nick to watch the last year’s soccer match between Italy and France. An hour later, sweaty and hoarse from shouting, they moved into the kitchen. Nick pulled a pan out of the fridge and put it on the stove. Soon the delicious smell of garlic and basil filled the kitchen.
“Wow!” Ethan said, sniffing behind Nick’s back.
“Well, get ready. Mrs. Zubrowski cooks the world’s best Italian meatballs.”
“Lisa’s mom?” asked Ethan, surprised.
Nick nodded. He put the plates on the table and pulled out a bowl of lettuce from the fridge.
“So how often does she cook for you guys?” asked Ethan. He was sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing his hands in anticipation.
“For me,” Nick corrected. “Only when my dad leaves with the expedition. When he is at home, we cook together. We’re not as good at cooking as she is, but we have fun. Dad says that every man should learn to cook.”
“What about your mother? Does she like to cook?” A small, condescending smile appeared on his lips.
“My mother died in a plane crash, along with my sister, three years ago.”
The smile vanished from Ethan’s face.
“Oh. I’m sorry!” he said. “So, now you live with your father?”
Nick nodded.
After dinner, Nick showed Ethan his music room. He powered up his 500-watt Marshall amplifier, picked up his Gibson guitar and played a couple of songs by the popular band Electric Shock.
“Not bad,” Ethan said rather indifferently.
As it turned out, he was not interested in music at all but showed real enthusiasm when Nick took him upstairs to his father’s office. At the furthest corner of the room, by the window, stood a writing desk with a row of tall bookcases behind it. A dark leather sofa sat against the opposite wall with a shabby and worn tapestry hanging above it. Ancient maps, exotic masks, and framed photographs covered the walls. A photo of two young men standing side by side drew Ethan’s attention.
“Who are they?”
“On the left, wearing a hat and what it looks like a long skirt, is my father. And the other is his friend, a tourist from Austria. Back there, in Burma, dad saved his life that summer. That was before I was born.”
“Interesting,” Ethan muttered, examining the picture closely. He looked up at the colorful peacock tail hanging from the top of a bookshelf, walked around the floor-standing world globe and stopped in front of a portrait of a beautiful woman. “Is this your mother?”
Nick nodded. Ethan touched the wooden figurine of a leopard frozen in a jump. The black lacquer peeled off in places and a web of hairline cracks covered it from top to bottom.
“My father brought it from Zanzibar, where he was following the trail of the Maghreb sorcerer.”
Ethan turned to him. Nick smiled at the expression on his face.
“If you read Aladdin, you remember, there was a wizard who asked Aladdin to retrieve an oil lamp for him.”
“Aladdin’s wonderful lamp?” Ethan asked.
Nick enjoyed the effect of his words.
“Well, at that time it was just an old oil lamp.”
“An old oil lamp,” Ethan repeated with emphasis. “A lamp with a genie?” He laughed and threw up his hands. “I see that your father—” Nick stiffened expecting to hear a joke. “He’s a real archaeologist,” Ethan said, looking around. “So in school why the hell are they saying that—”
Nick waved. “Don’t listen to anyone. They know nothing.”
“I agree,” Ethan said. “So, where is your father now?”
“I wish I knew,” Nick said after a pause and sighed. “Somewhere in Cambodia.” He could not shake the uncomfortable feeling. His father should have reached the camp yesterday. Why isn’t he calling? Nick spun the globe, his gaze drifting over the oceans and continents as if in hope to find the answer.