Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat (4 page)

“That didn’t hurt,” she said.

“Oh, really?”

“You have to be tough. Dad says so.”

“Stop being annoying.”

“I’m not. He also says you can’t carp, and don’t tell me it’s a fish, because it’s not. It means to complain without any good reason.”

He started to show her the blood blister on his thumb, but she’d turned her head toward the nearest window, already wanting to go check the yard.

“The man’s gone,” he said. “Stop worrying.”

She frowned. “I can’t. Will, something’s wrong. Can’t you tell? It’s not only that Mom and Dad are gone. That Dutch we’re learning? It isn’t Dutch!”

“Huh?”

She explained looking it up on the Internet at her friend’s house and discovering that she could barely understand the real Dutch on a number of sites.

“We must be from some backwater, remote place in Europe,” he guessed, “where they speak a version of Dutch that no one uses anymore.”

“Is that even possible?”

With a heavy sigh, he put down his tools.

“I may have been there, when I was really little,” he confessed as a vague and distant memory wafted ghost-like through his mind.

Her face lit up. “Tell me!”

“It’s not much. I remember big mountains with snow and a huge waterfall. And some stone buildings, like an old castle. Once, I tried to ask Dad about it - really ask him. You know, not let him wiggle out and give a non-answer.

“But I wasn’t able to do it. As big and strong and smart as he is, I got this feeling it would hurt him, that I shouldn’t push. So I didn’t.”

She looked down, thinking.

“I feel the same,” she said.

Worried she was about to get moody, he fished around for something to say and realized they’d forgotten a chore. “Verdoor, what about the prince and princess?”

“Poor things,” she said. “They must be starving.”

“While I finish this, you put out some herrings to thaw, and we’ll let them out. You know how protective they are. If that weird man’s still anywhere near, they’ll smell him and make him wish he’d never been to Ohio!”

***

As Angelica approached the igloo, a frantic tapping erupted on the other side of its little wooden door. She opened it, and out surged a pair of large aquatic birds, honking huffily as if to say “it’s about time!” Called Koonen-Kroogen (
Royal-Crowned
) penguins, they waddled speedily down a narrow path in the woods behind Beverkenhaas.

No ordinary Antarctic fowl, these had deep purple feathers the color of high quality amethyst. Their undersides glistened silvery white, and the tops of their heads were crowned with tufted, golden yellow plumage. Will and Angelica had to trot to keep up with them.

In the summer, the birds preferred the coldness of their igloo, but they needed exercise, even if the only available water was warm and fresh. This chore never felt like work to the kids. The large and intelligent birds, with their awkward waddling and playful natures, always made them smile.

Deep in the vacant land behind their house, a tiny creek fed a shallow pond. Prince Toorstin and Princess Clementina, as they were called, squawked with joy and rushed ahead. They belly-flopped off a mud bank into the clear water and streaked around like a pair of purple torpedoes, while the Steemjammer kids tossed them partially thawed herrings. They liked them cold.

“The man in the green coat’s long gone,” Will observed, “or Toory and Clemmie would have sensed him. And look.”

He pointed at fresh footprints in some mud.

“See how far apart they are? That means he was running and probably very scared. We’re safe now.”

His sister had something else on her mind.

“There are no mountains in Holland,” she said out of the blue. “It’s totally flat. I saw it on the Internet.”

“Yeah,” Will said absentmindedly as he tossed cold herrings left and right, making sure one bird didn’t get more than the other.

“Dad says we’re from Holland, but you remember snow-capped mountains. How?”

He stopped in mid-throw, realizing she was right. That was weird.

“Never thought of it,” he said, tossing the fish. “Maybe it’s not a memory. I could have seen a picture.”

But he knew that wasn’t true. He could still feel the sting of cold in his nose and the pain in his chest when he ran or went up steps. Like a dream, he recalled his mother’s voice explaining “thin air” to him.

“Or maybe something isn’t right,” Angelica said, wagging a herring at him. “You know there’s no such thing as purple penguins. The Internet says so.”

Will made a face. “So, we’re feeding herrings to what, hallucinations?”

“Maybe Dad dyes their feathers.”

Will burst out laughing. “Did you ever see him do that?”

“Did you ever see him vanish?”

“Good point. What is this Internet thing, anyway?”

“I don’t know, but it’s like a magic crystal ball. It can tell you about anything.”

“Except purple penguins. You know what Dad’d say.”

“Oh, yeah.” She glanced down and became very serious. “Where do you think he is?”

Stay positive, he warned himself. Keep her happy. “He’s looking for Mom. I’m sure of it.”

He believed it, too. He knew that she was constantly on their father’s mind and that he desperately wanted to find her.

“Yeah,” Angelica said.

“Or he’s hiding,” Will ventured, “and this is some weird way to test us.”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

“He could. There are rooms in Beverkenhaas I’ve never been in.”

She stopped in mid-throw and arched an eyebrow.

“If you’ve never been in them,” she said, “how do you know they’re there?”

“I just do. There’s a four-foot space, for example, between your bedroom and Mom’s sewing room.”

“Ect neet!”

“Yep. And there’s a big space between the library and the dining room. Maybe ten feet wide.”

She threw the last herring and squinted, trying to process what he’d just told her.

“What do you think’s in there?” she asked.

He thought how he’d always wanted to know but had been afraid to search for the hidden door that had to exist, and a mischievous grin crossed his face. With his dad gone, what could stop them? Furthermore, the discovery of footprints had alarmed him, making him think his sister really had seen someone peeking in their windows. It was time to get some answers. “Let’s find out.”

***

An hour of rapping on the walls of the dining room and library produced nothing. Hoping to find a hidden catch that might open a secret door, they tugged on wall sconces, and Will got up on the library’s ladder to push knobs on the crown molding. His sister worked the flue lever in the small fireplace, but she only got soot on her hand. No secret door opened.

Angelica tensed with fear. She’d seen something out of the corner of her eye and wondered if it was one of those strange creatures they’d been preparing for.

She had no idea what Shadovecht were, except that they were bad, like burglars or kidnappers – and yet somehow worse. Each room in Beverkenhaas had weapons hidden in secret compartments, but she wasn’t supposed to fight. During a Shadovecht drill she had to lock herself in a safe room and not come out until a family member tapped a special code on the door.

She’d asked her father a lot about Shadovecht and had received few answers, save for the distinct impression that they weren’t even human. He’d told her to report anything she saw that was strange or out of place.

“Will,” she whispered, not daring to move.

He didn’t hear her and continued pushing at knobs.

Now she realized what bothered her. The room had darkened slightly, which meant that someone or something was blocking the light coming through a window. Maybe it was only the man in the green coat again, she thought. She overcame her fear and turned her head just enough to see.

A shadowy figure loomed on the other side of the nearest window pane! It was far too large and dark to be the little man. Her eyes opened wide.

“Will,” she managed to cry. “Shadovecht!”

Chapter
4

The thing in the shadows

“Shadow what?” Will said.

“Vecht!” Angelica peeped in a high, frightened voice, pointing at the window. She popped open a secret compartment in the wall, and a heavy, two-handed battle axe fell out. THUNK. Its sharp blade sunk in the wooden floor, narrowly missing her foot.

Will turned his head with alarm. “Shadovecht?”

A dark shape lurked in the window. For a second he froze stiff, clutching the ladder tensely, but he hopped down and rushed to his sister, who was trying to free the mighty battle axe.

With a grunt he tugged it from the floor boards and faced the window. He remembered his father telling him: “You have to smash their brains to fully stop them. The problem is they can hide them almost anywhere: their chest, stomach, bottom – and some try to throw us off and actually keep them in their heads.”

Only now did Will realize how limited that advice was, and he wished he’d asked his father how you knew where their brains were!

“Run!” he told his sister, planting his feet firmly on the floor and hefting the battle axe into attack position.

The dark shape moved up to the window ominously. He wished he were stronger. Trembling, he stood his ground, tightening his grip on the handle.

“What are you people doing in there?” a muffled female voice said from the other side of the glass, and they realized her shadow had been magnified out of proportion.

Brother and sister stared in astonishment and then broke down laughing. It wasn’t some nefarious assailant from their father’s stories - it was their first cousin, Giselle!

***

“Don’t you ever look out your windows?” said Giselle Steemjammer, who struggled to get comfortable in the oversized armchair in the den. Shifting this way and that, nothing felt right. She ended up settling herself onto a heavily padded footstool. “I was out there for almost an hour.”

“You could have knocked,” Angelica said.

Giselle’s large, gray-green eyes flashed. They were almond shaped and exotic - not bugging out like her Uncle Henry’s, but certainly mysterious and capable of powerful expression. She had long, straight brown hair that was only double-cowlicked. This caused it to have counter-rotating swirls in the back, which made it relatively easy to brush.

Giselle was older than Will by a few months. Angelica thought she was very pretty and had always looked up to her, when they weren’t arguing. Giselle claimed to be “disturbed by small children” but in truth was often nice to Angelica.

“You could have looked outside and seen me,” she said with only the slightest hint of a Dutch accent.

“But why didn’t you knock?” Angelica persisted.

“Because I don’t like knocking, and your door hurts my knuckles. With all those carvings, there’s no flat place to knock.”

“You could have pulled the door chain.”

“And be zapped by your creepy gong?”

“It doesn’t ‘zap’ you.”

“It zaps my eardrums and makes them ring for hours. And then the little door flaps open with that disturbing face popping out! No, I’m not about to pull your door chain, thank you very much.”

Will laughed. When someone used their door gong, a small panel opened to the side, and a hideous white face popped out with a puff of steam. His father thought it was a tremendously good joke.

“Dad says it keeps away door-to-door salesmen,” he said.

“I’m sure it would,” his cousin automatically agreed. “What was that again? A door salesman, you said?”

Will shrugged. They’d never had any, so he wasn’t really sure.

“Speaking of Onkel Hendrelmus, is he here?”
Uncle
.

“He was,” Will said, “until three days ago.”

“He’s gone?”

“There was a noise in the basement, and he went down to check it out.”

“Aha!”

“You know what happened?”

“No, I said ‘aha’ to sound knowledgeable, like I’m in command of the situation. Don’t be so easily fooled.”

Angelica smiled. She loved it when her cousin spoke like she had some secret, mysterious power and wished she could do the same.

“Anyway,” Will explained, “when we came back from our chores, he wasn’t here. No note. Nothing but his lantern on a work bench by the boiler.”

He folded his hands, not sure what else to say. An uncomfortable silence passed.

“There are ice crystals around your air vent,” Giselle spoke at last. “I see an actual icicle. Do you people enjoy shivering?”

“The cooling system’s on the fritz,” Will said. “We’d rather it be frosty than a sauna.”

“Let’s brew some hot
camellia sinensis
, then.”

“Huh?” Angelica said.

“Tea! You have some, don’t you?”

***

“Passable,” Giselle said.

Now in the living room, she sipped a cup of green tea while trying to relax on a gray leather couch that had a large and inexplicable knob in the middle, which she avoided. At last she decided to sit on the floor.

“You know you can cook or ferment tea leaves,” she said, “and get other flavors. Oolong is roasted. And Earl Grey is spiked with bergamot, whatever that is. Probably some plant that’s insanely touchy and difficult to grow, like coffee bushes.”

Coffee was too hard to grow in Ohio, but they were able to grow tea shrubs in large pots, which could be rolled inside in winter. They pinched off young, green leaves to brew.

“Or, Maker forbid, you could actually buy some professionally made tea,” she said.

“You mean with money?” asked Angelica, who drank warm milk with honey. She didn’t care for tea.

“No, with shiny rocks. Of course I mean money.”

“Dad doesn’t like money. He says it has no value and might even be evil.”

A burst of laughter struck Giselle so that she accidentally spewed some tea into the air.

“‘Money is the root of all evil,’” she said, then grinned conspiratorially. “I have some. Want to see it?”

Brother and sister glanced at each other.

“Sure,” said Will. “Couldn’t hurt.”

“How’d you get it?” Angelica asked.

“That’s the strange part,” Giselle told them. “I was riding my bicycle around town the other day when I saw a tortoise in a flower bed. It was so little and pretty, with this odd yellow design on the shell that looked like caribou antlers. Anyway, it was very still, and I wasn’t sure if it was alive or made of clay. So I sat down to watch it, to see if it would move.

“Apparently I was there some time, and people walking by on the sidewalk put money in my bicycle’s basket. Take a look.”

From the pocket of her gray, homespun dress she produced a handful of crumpled papers and metal disks. Will and Angelica leaned in to examine them. Rectangular and printed in green and black, the papers had symbols, numbers, and men’s faces on them.

“That’s twenty-nine ‘dollars’ in paper money,” their cousin explained. “These coins all together are worth two hundred and seventeen ‘cents.’”

“Dollars and cents,” Will said. “I’ve heard about that but never really understood.”

“It’s a dual system, I think. Dollars are for larger purchases, and cents are for little things, like gum or wingnuts.”

“What’s with the eye on the pyramid?” asked Angelica, mystified. She’d seen money before but never this close.

“Who knows? It’s kind of creepy.”

“This is what they use to get things?”

“Yeah, like kaffee, which your father buys at the store. I’ve seen the cans in your kitchen.”

“No,” Will said. “He won’t touch money. He trades for what we need. Or he repairs steam boilers and fixes the old engines at the Mad River Railroading Museum. Then, people give him his kaffee and other stuff.”

“Like herrings,” Angelica added.

“Why doesn’t he just use money?” their cousin said. “Money represents time, skill and effort. The more of that you put out, the more money you get, which you can then use to get the products of other peoples’ time, skill and effort, like a decent cup of tea.”

“Because money’s bad and worthless,” Angelica retorted. “If people just gave it to you because you were staring at a tortoise, it must be.”

“I think they felt sorry for me because my dress was homemade, I had no shoes, and my bicycle had been welded together from parts of other broken bicycles. Oh, it was real, by the way.”

“What?” Will asked.

“Velocitus!” she said with a smile, pulling a tiny tortoise from her pocket and putting it on the table next to the money. “That’s what I’ve named it.”

About three inches long, it had a delicate, antler-like yellow pattern on its back. It stood quite still, except Angelica thought she saw it blink.

“It’s adorable!” she said. “Is it a boy or girl?”

Giselle shrugged. “We’ll know if it lays eggs.”

She put it in a large, bone-white bowl of sand that rested on the low table in front of the couch.

“It should be safe there,” she said.

“No-” Will tried to stop her, but he was too late.

All over the house bells and whistles suddenly went off. The hour had struck. Eleven in the morning, the tiny green dragon began its puffing on the wall by the stairs. The little gnome village came alive with a burst of activity, and above them the war zeppelin hissed and zoomed around in circles on its tether, firing off shots from its tiny cannon.

In the bowl there was movement. Jets of steam hissed out of the swirling sand like weird geysers! The tiny tortoise froze in terror. One by one, eleven miniature iron skeletons rose out of the sand and began dancing and twirling in a macabre celebration. Some had little musical instruments in their hands, and others held swords.

Velocitus tucked itself tightly inside its shell. Recovering from her shock, Giselle scooped the tortoise out and kissed its back while rubbing its belly gently.

“There now,” she soothed. “It’s okay. Begekkin steemspeel.”
Crazy steam toy
.

“Your home has steam clocks, too,” Will said defensively.

“Not like yours! We have dancing bears and woodpeckers and healthy, happy things. Not miniature grim reapers.”

“This isn’t the first time it’s scared you.”

“So I forgot. And I’m not scared. I was worried for Velocitus.” She turned to it. “Poor baby. There now.”

“You seem more touchy than usual.”

“Now I’m touchy?”

“You’ve freely admitted it in the past.”

“All right! Ganoof!”
Enough already
!

She put Velocitus back in her pocket and stood up suddenly, forgetting that the empty tea cup had been balanced in her lap. It went sailing. Fast and agile, little Angelica reached out and snatched it safely out of the air.

“What if I am touchy?” Giselle admitted crankily.

Like a deflating balloon, she sat back down. Her eyes sank to the floor, and it seemed that all the energy had drained out of her face. Will hadn’t seen her like this before and grew concerned.

“My father vanished, too,” she said.