Down a Lost Road Read Free Page A

had
captioned the photo in his small, careful hand: Iell
egledhruir . He’d never told me what it meant. I think he
expected me to figure out, or maybe he just disappeared before he
got a chance to explain. I’d always guessed it was something from
one of Tolkien’s languages, which my dad supposedly knew better
than almost anyone. But that was all I had. Just one more mystery
in my life. I was so tired of mysteries with no clues and no
answers.
    I moved on to a photo of the whole family
the day we’d gotten our dog Jas, we kids laying in the grass with
the puppy, Dad standing by the old magnolia. And there again, the
shimmer behind his left shoulder.
    I gazed at the shimmer for a few moments,
then went back to my baby picture. Suddenly I bent forward,
studying the picture more closely. That cold shock tore through me
again. I held up the coin so it covered its image in the picture,
where it hung on a chain around my dad’s neck, slipping out from
under his shirt as he bent over my crib. Every stark detail was
there, and I had never even noticed.
    * * *
    “ Back already?”
    I stopped breathless in the doorway of Mr.
Dansy’s shop. I wasn’t even sure why I had run all the way back to
the store, or what I wanted to say to Mr. Dansy when I got there. I
just stood there, mute and paralyzed, until another customer
shouldered out of the store past me, giving me a nasty glare.
    “ Forgot batteries,” I
mumbled, waving at the first thing that caught my eye.
    I edged around Mr. Dansy and stared blankly
at the battery display. My thoughts careened from one plan to
another. Maybe I could threaten him, or try to trick information
out of him, or beg and plead. All the while I could feel his
wide-eyed terror, like he was expecting some kind of monster to
jump out behind me. It got me nervously glancing over my shoulder
too.
    Mr. Dansy drew up close beside me, dabbing
at his forehead with his cuff. “Well, darlin’, you didn’t lose
it…did you?”
    I jumped in spite of myself.
    “ It was my father’s, Mr.
Dansy!” I turned to face him. “My father’s! Where did you get it?
Did he give it to you? Or did you steal it from him? It doesn’t
look like the sort of thing there are a lot of, you
know.”
    “ Shh!” Mr. Dansy waved
frantically. “‘Course not! That’s why you gots to hush. You do
still have it, though? Where’s it at?”
    “ It was my father’s. Of
course I still have it,” I said crossly.
    If he was relieved it didn’t show. His face
was so pale it looked almost grey, and beads of sweat dribbled down
his temples. He kept blotting them away, but they kept reappearing.
I stared at him, baffled. What had gotten into him? What had gotten
into all of us, for that matter?
    “ Please, Merelin, keep your
voice down!”
    “ What’s wrong? It’s
just—”
    The alarm on his face silenced me. He seemed
to be listening, alert like a police dog when it hones in on a
scent. His eyes roved over the shop, toward the windows, searching.
They fixed on something – his whole body tensed. I could literally
see the blood drain from his face.
    “ They’re here,” he
whispered. “I should’ve known they’d come. How’d they know? Must’ve
followed. Must’ve been watching.” He turned to me so abruptly that
I flinched away. “Get out of here now!”
    “ What? Who?”
    “ Don’t ask, no time! Hurry,
you got to get away safe before they find you, before they find you
and take Pyelthan from you!”
    He closed his eyes, his lips twitching
noiselessly. I took one step back, but that was as far as I could
go. Mr. Dansy shook my arm.
    “ He’s ready. He’ll explain
it all. Trust me, darlin’, go!”
    I wanted to protest but I just stood there
like a lump, staring at him slack-jawed.
    “ You’ve got to be kidding,
right? Go where? I don’t even have a car!” I managed to gasp. “No,
wait a second. How well did you know my dad? Do you know where he
is? How’d you get his coin? What does this have to do